Championing the rights of the Jamaican worker, the life work of Helene Davis Whyte

Helene Davis Whyte (born 1956) is a trade union activist and the general secretary of the Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers (JALGO), which represents 5,000 workers in local and national government and quasi-government agencies.

Davis Whyte, who is today president of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions,  is one of four children. Her father was a savvy businessman, and she recalls that her childhood was a "prosperous and happy one." She attended the prominent, Queen's High School located in St Andrew, however, while in sixth form, her father's business began to crumble. She subsequently dropped out of school to work and support the needs of her family. In an interview, she revealed, "Sometimes I left home without breakfast; I never had the lunch money and when I got home, I was not sure that I would see dinner."

She would later go on to have her first child at the age of 19. In 1995 she married Frederick Whyte, a former commissioner of the Jamaica Fire Brigade, and had a second child.

After a rough start, things took a turn with the start of a new career.

That career began with, maybe a happy coincidence, when she worked at the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation. Davis Whyte admitted that at the outset "I was probably one of the most anti-union persons" working in local government.

When a new mayor said he would lay off members of her department, she and other workers decided to ask for JALGO's assistance. During a meeting with then-general secretary E. Lloyd Taylor, Davis Whyte became the speaker for the group. Her co-workers grew immensely impressed with her representation of their issues and so they elected her a delegate to JALGO, and she became increasingly involved in union work.

Davis-Whyte would eventually be elected vice-president of JALGO's Municipal Branch, and in 1984 was elected the national union's education officer. In 1995, after Taylor's retirement, she was elected general secretary (the union's highest office) and was re-elected in 1998, 2001 and 2004. Her nomination was a tumultuous one, and nearly caused a riot on the convention floor.

During her tenure as a union leader, Davis-Whyte has opposed the flexible work-week for reducing workers' hours, pushed for the re-organisation of public welfare services, and urged a collaborative approach to policymaking in which unions would participate in commissions, boards and advisory bodies to alleviate the impact of austerity measures. Helene Davis-Whyte holds an associate degree in business studies and professional certificates in trade union studies and labour economics. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in human resource management from the University College of the Caribbean in 2006.

Davis-Whyte has distinguished herself in a field that is still, to this day, largely male-dominated, and for her efforts she was awarded the Order of Distinction (Commander Class) in 2008.

Since then she has gone even further, playing an integral role in the Transformation and the Partnership for a Prosperous Jamaica. She is also a member of the Labour Advisory Committee, the Economic Programme Oversight Committee, and the Generation Procurement Entity.

She has also been a member of the boards of the HEART Trust NTA, and the National Housing Trust.

Not resting on her laurels for even a moment, she is also a Public Relations/Communications Director of The Queen's School Past Students Association and is co-chair of the Emergencies, Disaster and Climate Change Steering Group of Public Services.

It seems Davis-Whyte's work is never done.