On April 21, 2026, trade union leaders gathered in Jamaica for a conversation that could reshape how the nation approaches work, wages, and worker dignity. The introductory workshop on shaping Jamaica's National Employment Policy, convened by the International Labour Organization in collaboration with the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, marked a turning point: workers' voices would no longer be an afterthought in policy-making, but central to it.
This matters because employment policy often gets trapped in spreadsheets and GDP growth targets, divorced from the actual lives of people trying to support families on unliveable wages or navigating the precarity of the gig economy. Jamaica has been without an updated National Employment Policy for over a decade—the process stalled after 2011—and now, with momentum building again through a new tripartite steering committee, trade unions saw their moment to ensure the upcoming policy reflects workers' real challenges, not just economic abstractions.
ILO Workers' Activities Specialist Vera Guseva set the tone early: "Employment policy has to be grounded in workers' lived realities." She pushed back against the notion that job creation alone constitutes success. Decent wages, security, fairness, and inclusion matter just as much as headcount. Dexroy Martin, speaking for the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, painted a portrait of a workforce in distress—underemployed despite having jobs, trapped in insecure work, facing skills mismatches, and watching wages stagnate year after year. For union leaders, the National Employment Policy represented something larger: a lever to influence national development through sustained dialogue with government.
The ILO grounded the workshop in the Employment Policy Convention (No. 122), which rests on three pillars: full employment, productive employment, and freely chosen employment. The message was unmistakable—quantity cannot substitute for quality. Jobs without dignity or rights are not the answer.
What emerged from the diagnostic data was sobering. Jamaica's labour productivity remains low and has actually declined over time, a problem directly tied to the wages workers receive and the long-term health of the economy. More than half the workforce operates in the informal economy, locked out of social protection and the power of collective bargaining. The country faces significant skills mismatches, low digital intensity across many sectors, and particular struggles in tourism—a major employer where women especially endure insecure work and limited pathways for advancement. Gender gaps persist in emerging sectors like renewable energy, even as Jamaica transitions toward cleaner energy futures.
From this data, trade unions identified their battle lines. Youth employment dominated the conversation—young workers face growing precarity whether in the digital economy, gig work, tourism, or business process outsourcing. Participants returned repeatedly to liveable wages and job security. They emphasized the need to transition workers from informal to formal employment with full social protection. And they framed an essential demand: productivity gains must translate into decent work and wage-led growth, not profits extracted while workers fall further behind.
Four priority clusters emerged: wages and working conditions, youth employment, skills and training, and the transition to formality and social protection. Gender equality, workplace safety, and protection from violence and harassment cut across all four.
The workshop ended not with optimistic hand-wringing but with concrete next steps. Trade unions were asked to submit written inputs ahead of consultations scheduled for May. As Jamaica moves from diagnosis to formulation of its National Employment Policy, unions made their position clear: they are ready to shape this process—but only if workers sit at the table, not before it.