Kali­fa Clyne

Five Re­pub­lic Bank branch­es re­mained closed yes­ter­day as a re­sult of staff ab­sen­teeism. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Lesli Hay said the "un­usu­al" ab­sen­teeism could be linked to on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the bank and the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU).

In a re­sponse to queries, Hay said that branch­es in Mara­bel­la, Ma­yaro, Fyz­abad, Glen­coe and Grand Bazaar re­mained closed yes­ter­day. "The bank has, how­ev­er, ex­pressed its ap­pre­ci­a­tion to those loy­al and com­mit­ted staff who were at branch­es...and re­grets any de­lays that cus­tomers may have ex­pe­ri­enced."

One bank em­ploy­ee, who pre­ferred to re­main anony­mous, said work­ers chose to skip work to at­tend May Day cel­e­bra­tions yes­ter­day in South Trinidad. BIG­WU pres­i­dent Vin­cent Cabr­era could not be reached for com­ment. How­ev­er, in his May Day speech dur­ing the Joint Trade Union Move­ment ral­ly in Clax­ton Bay, he spoke of ne­go­ti­a­tions with the bank.

He said the fact that over 2,000 work­ers were paid on­ly 27 per cent of the en­tire salary bill was scan­dalous. "The over 73 per cent of that salary bill is paid to 191 fat cats," said Cabr­era. "The work­ers of Re­pub­lic Bank will not set­tle for any­thing less than they just­ly de­serve." The Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) al­so re­port­ed staff ab­sen­teeism.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the cor­po­ra­tion ad­vised that the pub­lic may ex­pe­ri­ence de­lays on the reg­u­lar bus routes. "This is a re­sult of an un­ex­pect­ed high vol­ume of bus dri­vers who did not turn up for du­ty this morn­ing in­di­cat­ing that they were sick," the re­lease read.

May Day, or In­ter­na­tion­al Work­ers' Day, is a cel­e­bra­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al labour move­ment. It is cel­e­brat­ed on May 1 every year and is a na­tion­al hol­i­day in some coun­tries, such as Chile, Brazil, Bangladesh, Sin­ga­pore and many coun­tries in Eu­rope. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, plans in­clud­ed a march from Mara­bel­la to Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) strike camp in Clax­ton Bay.