Raphael John-Lall

Up to March 2011, the Gov­ern­ment's wage in­crease of­fer to the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) was one per cent. The union re­ject­ed that of­fer. The Gov­ern­ment then said it would of­fer five per cent if the PSA ac­cept­ed the Gov­ern­ment's of­fer to set­tle im­me­di­ate­ly. Faced with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of go­ing to the Spe­cial Tri­bunal with an un­cer­tain out­come, the PSA on April 8 ac­cept­ed the of­fer, which be­came the stan­dard for the next four agree­ments its pres­i­dent, Wat­son Duke, signed with the Gov­ern­ment: the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA); Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (RHA); the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, and the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA). The Spe­cial Tri­bunal is es­tab­lished by the Civ­il Ser­vice Act, Chap 23:01. Its pur­pose is to hear and de­ter­mine dis­putes that arise in the Civ­il Ser­vice, Teach­ing Ser­vice, Prison, Fire and Po­lice Ser­vices, the Sup­ple­men­tal Po­lice Ser­vice and dis­putes con­cern­ing Cen­tral Bank em­ploy­ees. The PSA orig­i­nal­ly re­quest­ed a 60 per cent in­crease. That was even­tu­al­ly cut down to 34 per cent.

At the time the CPO made the five per cent of­fer, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an ap­pealed to unions to ac­cept the of­fer, stat­ing that a five per cent in­crease for all pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees will mean that salaries and wages ac­count for 19 per cent of Gov­ern­ment's an­nu­al bud­get. In an in­ter­view last Mon­day at the PSA build­ing, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, Duke said, "That formed the ba­sis on which the oth­er ne­go­ti­a­tions were based." The PSA start­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer in Oc­to­ber 2010 with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO). Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter that first meet­ing, the protest march­es through the cap­i­tal start­ed. "How does that math work out when the Cen­tral Bank and First Cit­i­zens bank got 16 per cent and 17 per cent, (re­spec­tive­ly)? They are gov­ern­ment work­ers, too. So we protest­ed that. In March, we were run­ning out of steam as not every­day you could fight. So we told our mem­ber­ship at the be­gin­ning of March that by month end, we would be set­tling at some­thing," he said. The mat­ter be­ing sent to the Spe­cial Tri­bunal was the turn­ing point for the PSA. "Up to March, they were of­fer­ing one per cent, then in March, the CPO of­fi­cial­ly gave us five per cent of­fer, be­fore that was five per cent was be­ing of­fered for im­me­di­ate set­tle­ment," Duke said.

He said in­stead of go­ing to the Spe­cial Tri­bunal and pos­si­bly end­ing up be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court, un­cer­tain about the out­come, the union de­cid­ed to set­tle. Duke did not want to make the same mis­take the PSA made in the 1980s when it went to the In­dus­tri­al Court and end­ed up with a mea­gre set­tle­ment.

"In the 1980s, Prime Min­is­ter George Cham­bers of­fered pub­lic ser­vants six per cent and they re­ject­ed it and, they went to court and they end­ed up with a five-year agree­ment that was ze­ro per cent for the first four years and one per cent the last year. Pro­mo­tion was frozen and so were the in­cre­ments," he said.

Duke ad­mit­ted that it is the Gov­ern­ment which con­trols the econ­o­my and the PSA took what it felt was the Gov­ern­ment's best of­fer. "At the end of the day, you can't beat a gov­ern­ment. The Gov­ern­ment has a role to play and must look af­ter the na­tion. The five per cent was the high­est the Gov­ern­ment was will­ing to go based on their plans for the na­tion." He said the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing its part as a re­spon­si­ble so­cial part­ner and, as a union, it can­not un­der­mine this. "In the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), there's a work­force in ex­cess of 2,000 work­ers. The Gov­ern­ment has shoul­dered re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as far as em­ploy­ment is con­cerned. The Gov­ern­ment al­so em­ploys on-the-job trainees, so how can we go against that and just call a fig­ure of $6,000 when no sci­en­tif­ic job eval­u­a­tion was done?"

Duke was adamant that the PSA's of­fer of five per cent for their mem­bers will im­pact on oth­er unions' ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Gov­ern­ment. "Since when are we ne­go­ti­at­ing for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU), or the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) or Bankers, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU)? We ne­go­ti­ate for pub­lic ser­vants. The Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to slow down, tak­ing aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures and try­ing to im­prove the econ­o­my." Duke be­lieves the oth­er unions which are ne­go­ti­at­ing with the State will not get more than five per cent be­cause it is all the Gov­ern­ment can af­ford. "We'll have to look at di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my and, by do­ing that, we will be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to cre­ate bet­ter of­fers as far as wages are con­cerned. Right now, it's very sen­si­tive. Once we com­plete our job eval­u­a­tion, the Gov­ern­ment should recog­nise that this process is sci­en­tif­ic and these salaries would be bet­ter."

Con­tract labour

PSA's sta­tis­tics in­di­cate there are 20,000 con­tract em­ploy­ees in the Pub­lic Ser­vice. "The con­tract work seems to match the va­can­cies in the Pub­lic Ser­vice. CPO's fig­ures show that there are 11,000 con­tract work­ers while ours show that there are around 20,000 con­tract work­ers." Duke said that the con­tract labour has been grow­ing over the years, not on­ly in the Pub­lic Ser­vice, but glob­al­ly. "I think this is a way to over­throw the Pub­lic Ser­vice and, per­haps es­tab­lish a ser­vice that is un­sta­ble, a ser­vice based on vari­able cost where they can hire and fire at will." Most of these con­tract po­si­tions are giv­en to young peo­ple, Duke said. "Most of the per­ma­nent work­ers have been around for a while. The young peo­ple are the ones who are se­ri­ous­ly chal­lenged where job se­cu­ri­ty is con­cerned. The ones who are 40 and un­der are se­ri­ous­ly chal­lenged in this re­gard." Cur­rent­ly, the PSA and the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion are set­ting up a com­mit­tee to deal with va­can­cies in the Pub­lic Ser­vice. The com­mit­tee will de­ter­mine whether those po­si­tions would be per­ma­nent or con­tract. "We have been meet­ing with the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion De­part­ment and they are set­ting up four com­mit­tees that would deal with fast-track­ing fill­ing these va­can­cies. We have had a num­ber of per­sons act­ing in se­nior po­si­tions for many years and not been ap­point­ed."

In the 21 months that Duke has presided over the PSA, he's faced much crit­i­cism, at­tack and vil­i­fi­ca­tion from the PSA ex­ec­u­tive and from fel­low trade union­ists. They said he "sell out" and that he was no longer a com­rade. Duke called James Lam­bert, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers "a di­nosaur trade union­ist," a rel­ic of Juras­sic Park who is not a friend of PSA. An­cel Ro­get, pres­i­dent of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union, la­belled Duke a "mad­man" who "need­ed med­ical at­ten­tion."

Duke's re­sponse: "What has he (Ro­get) fought and won for work­ers? Noth­ing! I re­fer to him as the most un­pro­duc­tive and the lamest trade union leader." On Mon­day, Duke said, "PSA is a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic union where mem­bers are al­lowed to ex­press them­selves. In the his­to­ry of trade union­ism, no oth­er sin­gle leader has been at­tacked as this cur­rent PSA pres­i­dent. But I don't think any oth­er pres­i­dent has been this suc­cess­ful as this pres­i­dent. We are go­ing to eval­u­ate the Pub­lic Ser­vice with­in one year. This failed to get off un­der three for­mer PSA pres­i­dents." He is con­vinced many peo­ple feel threat­ened by his age and vi­tal­i­ty.

Duke is 34. "For the first time, we have a young man tak­ing over a very pow­er­ful union. A young man who is seen by some as be­ing too young for the job. Where did he come from? These peo­ple who thirst for pow­er want to know this. You should see my Face­book page and my sup­port in the union. I want to leave PSA in a bet­ter po­si­tion than I met it."

Cor­rect­ing the wrongs

He said the pre­lim­i­nary stage of the process for job eval­u­a­tions has start­ed, but ex­pect to start the main work in Jan­u­ary and fin­ish by De­cem­ber 2012. "We are the stage right now where a com­mit­tee has been es­tab­lished and will meet some­time lat­er this month. The PSA will be rep­re­sent­ed and the CPO will al­so be there. We want to cre­ate in the PSA a spe­cial or­gan­i­sa­tion to deal with job eval­u­a­tion." This should cor­rect all the faults and in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the ser­vice, he said. "For the very first time, the Pub­lic Ser­vice re-clas­si­fi­ca­tion and com­pen­sa­tion struc­ture would be able to deal with all the anom­alies re­sult­ing from per­sons be­ing in the wrong class or the wrong grade or pay scale. Things like pro­mo­tion and job spec­i­fi­ca­tions will al­so be dealt with," he said. This process should mod­ernise the pub­lic ser­vice. "By the end of 2012, the Pub­lic Ser­vice will be en­tire­ly new. We want to make the Pub­lic Ser­vice the best in the Caribbean and chal­lenge the first world coun­tries in ef­fi­cien­cy," he said.

Di­nosaur move­ment

He pre­dicts fail­ure for the na­tion­al shut­down planned by oth­er trade unions. He called many of the trade union­ists plan­ning the shut­down "di­nosaurs." "Of course, they will fail. It would be mad for peo­ple to fol­low this di­nosaur move­ment. The days for ag­gres­sive union tac­tics are over," he said. He added peo­ple are well in­formed and know what the glob­al and lo­cal econ­o­my can af­ford. "There's no re­al shut­down com­ing. Those trade unions have no troops to strike. Peo­ple have ca­ble TV to see what's hap­pen­ing in the out­side world. They see what's hap­pen­ing in the Unit­ed States. They see we have a new gov­ern­ment in Trinidad try­ing to do some­thing."