Raphael John-Lall

The in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions bat­tle be­tween Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) has tak­en an­oth­er turn with TSTT on Tues­day is­su­ing a de­tailed one-page state­ment in the news­pa­pers say­ing that CWU is con­tin­u­ing to "fool" the pop­u­la­tion be­cause of the tac­tics it is us­ing. On Tues­day, the Guardian con­tact­ed Joseph Re­my, pres­i­dent gen­er­al, CWU, who, up to press time, said the union was in the process of prepar­ing a re­sponse to TSTT's state­ment.

TSTT con­demns CWU

In their lat­est war of words, TSTT has con­demned CWU for us­ing age-old tac­tics of bul­ly­ing the com­pa­ny dur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

TSTT said that CWU is fool­ing the pop­u­la­tion in­to think­ing there was no agree­ment in 2007. TSTT al­so ac­cused CWU of want­i­ng to get what it wants "with­out a sin­gle counter pro­pos­al." The com­pa­ny out­lined a se­ries of tac­tics the CWU en­gages in to get its way, one of them be­ing, to "bat­tle it out in the me­dia in­stead of across a ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble." The com­pa­ny al­so said CWU wants TSTT to give in to its every de­mand and CWU is hold­ing its cus­tomers to ran­som dur­ing every ne­go­ti­a­tion pe­ri­od.

In a point-by-point news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment, TSTT al­so ac­cused CWU of keep­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions un­set­tled as part of a greater ul­te­ri­or mo­tive with­in the trade union move­ment. No is­sue was left out by TSTT. It said CWU wants to have the charges against the work­ers set­tled as part of the ne­go­ti­a­tions and to have the com­pa­ny con­done dan­ger­ous be­hav­iour. Those charges TSTT re­ferred to arose from an in­ci­dent on Ju­ly 7 when CWU of­fi­cials and TSTT work­ers at­tempt­ed to de­liv­er a pe­ti­tion to the TSTT man­age­ment. They reached the ex­ec­u­tive floor at TSTT House, Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain, on­ly to be met by mem­bers of the po­lice Ri­ot Squad.

TSTT's in-house cam­eras cap­tured those who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the at­tempt to de­liv­er the pe­ti­tion. Sev­en­ty-five work­ers were sus­pend­ed with­out pay. TSTT last week is­sued a state­ment say­ing that the sus­pen­sions against three em­ploy­ees were lift­ed. Dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ings will be held for the re­main­ing 72 em­ploy­ees.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions dead­locked since 2007

CWU and TSTT have been locked in ne­go­ti­a­tion since 2007. CWU is claim­ing that an agree­ment was ar­rived at in 2007 for a 15 per cent in­crease across the board for ju­nior and se­nior bar­gain­ing units but, so far, TSTT's man­age­ment has re­fused to recog­nise it. Their dis­pute is now be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court.

TSTT's prof­its

TSTT has been say­ing that based on its prof­its, the work­ers of TSTT are get­ting a sound of­fer. This comes against the back­drop of a world­wide eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion and a slow­ing down of the T&T econ­o­my. Ear­li­er this year, TSTT chair­man Samuel Mar­tin said the com­pa­ny post­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of $384.3 mil­lion for the 2008-2009 fi­nan­cial pe­ri­od, more than dou­bling its prof­its from 2007-2008. Mar­tin said this was a very "sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment" over the pri­or year's af­ter-tax prof­it of $159.9 mil­lion. "In this very crit­i­cal time of a glob­al cred­it and liq­uid­i­ty crunch, it must be not­ed that TSTT has achieved in­ter­na­tion­al bench­marks on liq­uid­i­ty and as­set per­for­mance." In its lat­est news­pa­per state­ment, TSTT said the work­ers at TSTT en­joy salaries and wages that are well above those earned by oth­ers in sim­i­lar po­si­tions. It said that CWU's ex­pec­ta­tions are "un­re­al­is­tic" and that ne­go­ti­a­tions have be­come one-sided.

Cus­tomers and com­pe­ti­tion

"Cus­tomer is king," TSTT has said in its one-page news­pa­per state­ment. It said that the com­pa­ny's goals are to serve cus­tomers first and of­fer free and pro­gres­sive wages and work­ing con­di­tions to staff. At the same time, TSTT said it must re­main com­pet­i­tive as it now has com­peti­tors. TSTT said it would like to have a part­ner who ne­go­ti­ates in a dis­ci­plined man­ner and who is re­al­is­tic about the con­di­tions the com­pa­ny faces. TSTT said it has to face many up­hill bat­tles if it is to re­main com­pet­i­tive and ex­cel in of­fer­ing cus­tomers goods, prod­ucts and ser­vices that they de­serve. The com­pa­ny said it is de­ter­mined to bring changes that re­flect the en­vi­ron­ment in which it now op­er­ates, and ad­vised CWU that it needs show it is a mean­ing­ful stake­hold­er in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.