THE UNITED Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands has thrown its full support behind the Concerned Group of Church Leaders in counter-proposing a five-day system of flexi-time to Government's seven-day flexi-work week. And, while Government's Tripartite Committee on Flexi-Work Week has agreed to consider the counter-proposal, the Church is gearing up to mobilise public support should Government insist on implementing its seven-day system.
United Church leaders last week passed a resolution against flexi-week at their 32nd Synod held at Mico Teachers' College, putting forward a flexi-time system of five 24-hour workdays, each having two or three eight-hours shifts. This system, they say, would double employment and increase production by adding at least 35 more hours to the five-day work week. They also argue that it would increase productivity by reducing the length of workers' shifts from 10 hours to eight hours, and discourage criminal activity through the presence of large numbers of people on the streets during night hours.
"We feel our proposal has in it greater possibilities for realising the desired (economic) goals than even the proposal of flexi-work," said Rev. Earl Thames during the post-Synod press conference last Friday.
In their resolution, United Church leaders contend that flexi-week will undermine "spiritual grounding, family life, and wholesome recreation".
"It is the home and the church traditionally which have sought to impart those moral principles that regulate discipline," Rev. Thames noted. "Both the church and the home would be affected."
He pointed out that parents and children mostly spend time together on weekends, and said this vital family time would be lost if weekends were made into normal workdays. "Parent-child relationships would be seriously affected at a time when everybody is saying that part of the problem in Jamaica leading to the crime and violence being experienced is the breakdown of discipline," he observed. "It is the home and the church traditionally which have sought to impart those moral principles that regulate discipline."
He said church leaders are fairly confident that they will receive widespread public support for the alternative system as people gradually come to realise the full implications of flexi-work.
"Jamaica as a country, despite all its crime, all the violence, all the present moral decline, still has a God-ward look. The average Jamaican has a certain leaning towards an interpretation of life which includes God, and even if the person does not go to church they would feel that worship is an important part of life."
