Edwin Orlando (“Gabby”) Scott JP, BSS, BJH

On November 1, 1978, following thirteen years in the field of journalism at the Daily News and the Barbados Advocate, Orlando Scott joined the staff of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) as its Public Relations Officer. Sir Roy Trotman, who was then a Deputy General Secretary, advised Scott that, given the fact that the BWU was staffed by well-known Industrial Relations Officers, he should find a niche on which to build his career in the organization and, thereby, strengthen the BWU as well. And given the fact that Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) was an emerging field in Industrial Relations in Barbados at that time and that none of his colleagues in the BWU had been trained in the discipline, he began an earnest search for materials on the subject. He was later sent overseas for training in courses sponsored by the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL), the Geneva-based International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in Brussels.

Scott’s zeal for the BWU, its sister trade unions and employers in the Public Sector and the Private Sector to heighten and to place Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) as a key element in their training programmes as well as in collective bargaining was based on his belief that Barbados needed to view Occupational Safety and Health in a holistic way. He noted that sugar agriculture was on the decline and that the service sector in Barbados, led by Tourism, was growing and that the Factories Act of 1948 had become outdated. Much of his thinking was based on the news by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Ministry of Health and local bodies such as the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Barbados, the Diabetes Association and Cancer Society that Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) were the leading causes of ill health and death not just in Barbados but globally and that it was incumbent that the nation took positive action to save lives.

With the aid of presenters from the PAHO, the Ministry of Health, the Diabetes Association, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, and Professor Trevor Hassell (now Sir Trevor), the Chair of the National Commission on Non-Communicable Diseases and the Healthy Caribbean Coalition, the BWU’s Labour College’s health programme grew and NCDS became a major part of its training for the workforce. The BWU is indebted in particular to the PAHO and to the efforts by Sir Trevor Hassell who ably zealously assisted the BWU by presenting at seminar/workshops at the Labour College in Mangrove, St. Philip and at the BWU’s headquarters in St. Michael. He was also invited to address the BWU’s Annual Delegates’ Conference.

Scott was a member of the, PAHO Interim Task Force on NCDs, National Commission on NCDS and the National HIV/AIDS Commission.

In his role as an External Collaborator for the ILO Trinidad he carried out training in OSH in the Caribbean stretching from Suriname in the South to the Bahamas in the North.

He represented the Workers’ Group at the ILO in Geneva during sessions on a new Standard on Safety and Health in Agriculture.