THIS DAY IN OUR PAST

The following events took place on November 8 in the years identified:

1979:Jamaica Hundreds of

Railway Corporation workers call on the Government to move to end the industrial dispute which has cost the railway over $2 million in 46 days. The workers meet with Minister of Public Utilities and Transport Carlyle Dunkley, during which they express fears about the future of their jobs and the damage being done to the economy by industrial action by some of their colleagues. Before going to the ministry in New Kingston, the workers stop at the Gleaner offices and at the Ministry of Labour to state their case.They say that only a minority of JRC workers – guards, drivers and brakesmen occupying technical positions at the corporation – are holding the country to ransom. 1982:churches The island’s

are being urged to dramatise their concern for the unemployed by adopting programmes aimed at providing employment for at least one person for one day of the week in each congregation. The renewed call for the Church to participate in easing the unemployment problem in Jamaica is made by C. Evans Bailey in remarks to the half-yearly meeting of the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC) of which he is president. Bailey says that the economic conditions in the country have worsened, as they have in the rest of the world, since the JCC held its annual general meeting in May 1982. 1982:Michael Party leader

Manley reiterates the People’s National Party’s (PNP) call for the dismissal of three ministers of Government in its outline of a nine-point plan which “will ease the suffering and hardship that the people are now experiencing as a result of policies of the Government”. Speaking at a press conference at the Pegasus hotel, the PNP President and Leader of the Opposition Manley, on behalf of the PNP, call for the dismissal of the ministers of agriculture, industry and labour “for reasons already stated by opposition spokesmen”.

– The Gleaner Archives