Are Jamaica’s Labour Laws Being Exposed by COVID-19?

With a number of sectors forced to scale back as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, what are the implications regarding Jamaica’s redundancy laws, whereby employees would be entitled to redundancy payments after being out of work for a specified period of time? Can businesses already under the financial strain of the pandemic find the resources to honour those commitments? And how does the prevalence of fixed-term contracts for workers intersect with prevailing conditions? 

To discuss the topic, we are joined by the Director of industrial relations and allied services in the Ministry of Labour Gillian Corrudus, and Danny Roberts, Head of Hugh Shearer Labour Studies Institute at the University of the West Indies open campus.