Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers' Union (CWU) pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my has threat­ened to shut down op­er­a­tions at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) if it does not ad­dress work­ers' health and safe­ty con­cerns at two South lo­ca­tions."If we have to shut them down to get them (build­ings) tfixed then we make no apolo­gies for do­ing that. We go­ing in the ring. We have tak­en out our gloves," Re­my said yes­ter­day dur­ing a protestout­side the St James Street, San Fer­nan­do, TSTT branch.

Asked about what the CWU specif­i­cal­ly planned to do, Re­my said he could not di­vulge that. He said the union could not take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion that was not con­sis­tent with the pro­vi­sions of the law but would use the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act to in­struct the way for­ward.Re­spond­ing to a press re­lease by TSTT man­age­ment on Tues­day, which ac­cused the union of us­ing health and safe­ty is­sues as lever­age for bar­gain­ing, Re­my said the com­pa­ny's ir­re­spon­si­ble and "disin­gen­u­ous" re­sponse to the plight of the work­ers was ex­ac­er­bat­ing the al­ready dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. He said the press re­lease re­vealed its (TSTT) in­com­pe­tence and mis­han­dling of a "sim­ple" oc­cu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty is­sue.

Health and safe­ty is­sues in two build­ings have caused the con­tention be­tween TSTT and the CWU.In the first in­stance, em­ploy­ees at the Cipero Road work cen­tre com­plained about an in­fes­ta­tion of snakes since May, ac­cord­ing to Re­my, and to date the prob­lem per­sists. Al­so, work­ers at the St James Street build­ing launched com­plaints three months ago re­gard­ing poor work­ing con­di­tions, in­clud­ing un­san­i­tary toi­lets, dizzy­ing fumes and dirty car­pets.TSTT con­tend­ed in its re­lease the work­ers' ac­tion was un­jus­ti­fied as their health and safe­ty com­plaints had been ad­dressed and the com­pa­ny was con­tin­u­ing to take a proac­tive ap­proach to deal with their is­sues.In re­sponse, Re­my said yes­ter­day the work­ers' ac­tions and con­cerns were le­git­i­mate. At­tempts to con­tact the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment at TSTT were un­suc­cess­ful.