Pull Quote: “I enjoyed it, because for one thing, it was satisfying to me to help those workers who were unprotected, despite the fact that the law was there. Having laws on the books doesn’t mean you have protection, unless you can enforce those laws. The laws were there,NFL Jerseys From China, but for a number of reasons, the employers held the sway and they used their influence.”By Leon SuseranNorman Eric Newton Semple has spent the best years of his life ensuring that employees across BerbiceNorman Semplewere protected from unscrupulous practices by their employers. He represented their issues and concerns in the court of law and was successful most of the time.Born on October7, 1927, the seventh child of ten for his parents, Frances and Frederick Semple, at Number Eight Village, West Coast Berbice, Norman moved with the family to East Berbice in 1938. And it is there that he grew up.During his childhood days, his father, a boat-builder, purchased land in Canje, Voorborg, which still exists today. Originally, he said,Wholesale Jerseys Online, they did coconut farming there, but had to rent out the land to persons due to stealing.? He indicated that there are about 30 tenants. One of the streets in the area, Semple Street, still retains its name, after the family who bought the land.Norman attended Cumberland Methodist School and finished studies at Berbice High in 1945. After one year,Cheap Jerseys Store, he started to teach French at his Alma Mater, and then taught at the Mission Chapel Church School for eight years, from 1947. Semple was a very active member in the Mission Chapel Congregational Church where he served as Deacon from 1947 to 1967, but had to bow out of that since his job entailed frequent travelling. This did not mean he stopped taking a keen interest in church affairs.MARRIAGE AND ENTRY INTO LABOUR DEPARTMENTThe young teacher met his wife-to-be,Cheap NFL Jerseys Authentic, Joycelyn, a student nurse, at one of the dances in the town. They danced and “fell in love eventually and got married”. The couple tied the knot on September 15, 1956. The union bore three children: Maxine, Orin and Shawn. A year earlier, he decided to enter the Public Service, in 1955. Joycelyn passed away in 2006 and Norman married Maisie Smith three years later.Sitting at the 101-year-old family table - an heirloom he has preserved to this day.Among his first posts were Social Welfare Officer and Community Development Officer. He later moved on to the Labour Department. There, he eventually reached the designation of Chief Labour Officer, after which he retired in 1981.According to Mr. Semple, he left teaching because he realized that another job could have paid a bit more. “It was paying more than teaching at the time and it gave you a lot of privileges because, for the first time, I was able to get a car of my own. I got a loan from government. And I became attracted to this question of becoming a Labour Officer.”He was also one of the founding members of the New Amsterdam Cooperative Credit Union in 1959.Mr. Semple had prepared for entry into the Labour Ministry since he had been an external student of Metropolitan College in London. He studied privately at home and later wrote the Inter- BA and then Inter LLB, which he passed in 1955. He then applied for vacancies to the Labour Department.As a Labour Officer, he was enforcing the law. “That required me to do inspections of the various premises—shops, sawmills—inspecting all the workplaces, factories. There were minimum wages prescribed by law,” he said.Mr. Semple noted that there were a lot of breaches, especially in the shops in New Amsterdam. “They were either not paying the minimum wage for the shop assistants or not giving them the Annual Leave required by law. And I used to have to prosecute a lot of people in the Magistrate’s Court here, because of my legal background,” he recounted.He said that he was hoping to complete the LLB, which would have made him a full-fledged Attorney, but cited some distracting family issues as preventing this.Semple then became involved in the Trade Union Movement. He became an Executive Member of the Public Service Association [later Union] of Guyana and Chairman of the Berbice Branch of the same association. Later, he became the Vice- President and then President of the Public Service Union.Executives of the Public Service Association meeting with then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham (left). Norman Semple is third from right.The Caribbean Public Services Association (CPSA) was later formed and Semple had his stint for a year with that body. He retired in 1981 and was then offered a position of Regional Adviser on Labour Legislations and Labour Relations with the International Labour Organization (ILO). This p