Both Sides of The Coin: The Story of The Central Bank of Barbados 1972-2017

172 Reaction to the Bank's call for wage restraint was not confined to the island. A Barbadian professor at Fordham University in the United States argued that wage restraint would not assist the balance of payments since it was the middle class with the greater spending power who indulged in harmful conspicuous consumption and not the working class who bore the brunt of the wage cuts. The public criticism of his stance on wage restraint did little to get Blackman to relinquish his strongly- held position that unbridled wage and salary increases would hurt the economy in the long-run. However, he subsequently described the “... failure to establish a healthy dialogue with trade unions...” as one of the major disappointments of his tenure (see The First Decade, 1972-82 , p.12). Comments on a call-in programme In March 1982, Dr. Blackman participated in the phone-in programme “Guttaperk” carried by the state-owned radio station, the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation. Responding to a caller about his silence when Government ministers raised their own salaries, the governor said that to comment on the matter openly would not be a wise thing to do for several reasons, one of which was that he was “a creature of the minister of finance”. Those remarks, in particular the use of the word “creature”, sparked a public furore which was characterised by a number of editorial Newspaper clipping of article by Gladstone Holder critiquing Governor Blackman’s comment that he was a “creature” of the minister of finance.