Secretary general of Communication Workers' Union (CWU) John Julien is demanding that the Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT) pay salaries to thousands of employees on time."Today we are outside protesting as today is pay day and no one has been paid from TSTT's bargaining unit," he said
"When they went to the bank they were told that there is no money in the bank. Scotiabank said there was a problem with the batch that was uploaded. Everything is electronic. So TSTT uploads the information to Scotiabank and then Scotiabank then sends the money to the other banks. Scotiabank said there was a problem since Wednesday."Julien spoke to the media yesterday at a union picket at TSTT's offices, Henry Street, Port-of-Spain.
He said both Scotiabank and TSTT were "culpable" for what has happened and also said roughly 2,200 workers were affected and if they were not paid they there could be no work."Stop oppressing the TSTT workers, you are carrying us down a road that we do not want to go to," he said."The company has not even written to the workers telling them they have not been paid. It shows the disrespect for the workers. People have their mortgages to pay, so that means they have to pay interest as their salaries are late,"
He added that TSTT operates in a competitive environment and the management is not doing anything to assist in this area.
Bank responds:
In a release yesterday, Scotiabank said a technical error occurred overnight, resulting in a delay of the processing of automatic salary payments to 2,109 TSTT employees.The release said: "Investigations are in progress to identify the cause of the technical error discovered on Friday morning and which appears to be a cyber-glitch.
"The bank employed full resources to rectify the error and accounts in Scotiabank, First Citizens, RBC Royal Bank, Republic Bank and Intercommercial Bank will be credited by 4 pm today (yesterday.)"Scotiabank wishes to assure the employees of TSTT and our customers of our commitment to the timely processing of salaries and we apologise for the inconvenience caused by this unforeseen delay."