Former NUPW General Secretary Joseph Goddard Passes Away: Remembering His Impact on Barbados' Trade Union Movement and Public Service

The former General Secretary of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW), Joseph Goddard, has passed away. His career, spanning decades, left a significant mark on Barbados’ trade union movement and public service.

The following statement was issued by Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley on his passing:

“Having said goodbye to his successor at the National Union of Public Workers, Mr Denis Clarke, just a few weeks ago, receiving the news of the death of Mr. Joseph Goddard today was, to put it mildly, shocking.

I first met Joe when I was a young law student at the London School of Economics, where he was studying for his master’s degree in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management. While that was the first time I had ever come face to face with him, I must confess that his name was quite familiar to me.

By then, his was a household name in Barbados and he was the face and voice of the NUPW — an institution whose membership he served faithfully and vigorously for 34 years (1973 to 2007), most of it as General Secretary.

He was a trade unionist through and through, having been born a mere two years before the NUPW, originally called the Civil Service Association, was formed in 1944, but eventually serving in such a manner as to become its most recognised General Secretary of modern times.

His role in helping to guide the union to expanded and modern office facilities at Dalkeith, and the establishment of the Public Workers Academy in the mid-1980s together spoke to his forward-thinking approach to the task of improving the lot of public officers.

The significance of his leadership of the island’s premiere public service union for such an extended period becomes even more apparent when we consider that it covered some of the toughest periods in the nation’s modern history. Joe was there when the Tom Adams Government was dealing with the after-effects of the 1970’s oil crisis, as well as during the economic crisis of the Erskine Sandiford (Sir Lloyd) Administration.

As leader of the NUPW, he was also at the table for the discussions that led to the creation of the ground-breaking Social Partnership and the Prices and Incomes Protocol that emerged from it — setting up Barbados as a world model for handling national crises. Interestingly, well into his retirement from public life, Joe returned to the discussion table just a few years ago as a part of the historic Blue Ribbon Committee that crafted Barbados’ first minimum wage regime, which came into effect in 2022.