Here is a sug­gest­ed ques­tion for next year’s school ex­ams: what looks like a strike, be­haves like a strike but of­fi­cial­ly isn’t a strike? The an­swer: Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pub­lic sec­tor strikes.

Last Thurs­day, we saw the first of two strike days by teach­ers in T&T, with the sec­ond one sched­uled for Tues­day. The strike helped their stu­dents learn many things, none of them good, in­clud­ing weasel words to cov­er lies. Af­ter all, the il­le­gal strikes by our pub­lic sec­tor work­ers are nev­er called strikes–they are al­ways la­belled by their unions as days of re­flec­tion, rest or prayer.

In­deed, there is a lot to re­flect on.

One is how come our unions, al­ways so fas­tid­i­ous in the ap­pli­ca­tion of our labour laws, seem to be so more re­laxed about ef­fec­tive­ly go­ing on strike with­out fol­low­ing due process. The fact is that, call it what you may, when a trade union tells mem­bers to with­draw­al labour with­out fol­low­ing due process, it is break­ing the law.

Just over a week ago, the Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court spelt out clear­ly that, in her opin­ion, em­ploy­ers who uni­lat­er­al­ly im­pose cer­tain COVID-re­lat­ed poli­cies with­out fol­low­ing the right con­sul­ta­tion process with the unions are act­ing un­law­ful­ly. So, what about these il­le­gal strikes and the ob­fus­ca­tion with quaint words to avoid call­ing what these ac­tions re­al­ly are? When will unions be called out for their bla­tant il­le­gal acts?

Or let’s put it in an­oth­er way: is it ok for em­ploy­ers to in­tro­duce new COVID poli­cies, in­clud­ing manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion, as long as they don’t call them poli­cies or don’t por­tray them as a change to staff’s con­trac­tu­al terms?

What about call­ing the changes some­thing like ‘im­prove­ments on health and safe­ty pro­ce­dures’ in­stead? Or an ‘ac­tion to re­flect on hu­mankind’s mor­tal­i­ty’ if they are to take a leaf from the unions and come up with some­thing as philo­soph­i­cal as re­flec­tion days?

If em­ploy­ers and unions are to be treat­ed in a fair and equal way, sure­ly the lev­el of lat­i­tude giv­en to unions over il­le­gal strikes should be per­mis­si­ble to both par­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the sec­tor’s union TTUTA, one of the rea­sons for the call to switch off the re­mote teach­ing equip­ment for two days was for mem­bers to rest and re­flect due to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s al­leged dis­re­spect to the unions on sev­er­al mat­ters.

Wrong.

We all ac­knowl­edge the chal­lenges faced by teach­ers, just like pret­ty much every­one else, dur­ing these test­ing pan­dem­ic times. Teach­ing is dif­fi­cult, pe­ri­od. And it was made hard­er when, in a very short time, they had to switch from class-based to re­mote teach­ing.

But, un­like many oth­ers in the coun­try, they were kept on full pay through­out the pan­dem­ic, ir­re­spec­tive of whether teach­ing was hap­pen­ing or not. And, again, un­like nurs­es, po­lice of­fi­cers and many more, they didn’t have to step out of their hous­es to do their work on full pay–sav­ing on ex­pens­es like trans­port and, even more im­por­tant­ly, sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing their ex­po­sure to the dead­ly coro­n­avirus.

Even a pri­ma­ry school stu­dent would see that this is hard­ly proof of dis­re­spect. Be­sides, who is dis­re­spect­ing who at the mo­ment?

If there is one con­sen­sus re­gard­ing the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic world­wide is how much the ed­u­ca­tion of our chil­dren suf­fered due to the re­stric­tive mea­sures re­quired to con­tain the virus.

Even more trag­i­cal­ly, it is al­so clear that those from poor­er ar­eas are the ones who suf­fered the most, as bet­ter-off fam­i­lies found ways to keep their chil­dren study­ing, with or with­out for­mal class­es. TTUTA’s ‘black­out strike’ on­ly adds to that, as it had strong sup­port from gov­ern­ment schools whilst de­nom­i­na­tion­al and pri­vate schools ig­nored it.

An­oth­er fla­grant act of dis­re­spect is the fact that, de­spite all the ev­i­dence of how im­por­tant vac­ci­na­tion is to en­sure we live our lives as safe­ly as pos­si­ble, TTUTA re­mains against vac­ci­na­tion poli­cies as schools pre­pare to re­open. They have not even en­cour­aged teach­ers to come for­ward vol­un­tar­i­ly.

Teach­ers, we hope, are ed­u­cat­ed enough to look at the ev­i­dence and ig­nore fake news, so they will know vac­cines are safe. We al­so hope what they teach in­cludes the trans­for­ma­tion­al im­pact of vac­cines to hu­man­i­ty, slash­ing the death rates of chil­dren and dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­creas­ing life ex­pectan­cy, as we no longer have to face the prospect of crip­pling dis­abil­i­ties or death through dis­eases now ex­tinct or un­der con­trol like small­pox or po­lio.

What a bril­liant sto­ry they would have been able to tell their stu­dents about their role in stamp­ing out the coro­n­avirus, just like the world man­aged with small­pox, of­fi­cial­ly erad­i­cat­ed in 1980.

It sim­ply beg­gars be­lief to think that, of all pro­fes­sions, the teach­ing com­mu­ni­ty is not dri­ving the mes­sage and the ac­tion to in­crease the vac­ci­na­tion rate more broad­ly and es­pe­cial­ly amongst their own.

If they were, they would be tru­ly teach­ing not on­ly their stu­dents but the whole na­tion what a knowl­edge-based so­ci­ety can achieve and how com­mit­ted they are to teach­ing our younger gen­er­a­tions what it is like to be a law-abid­ing, com­mu­ni­ty-cen­tred, well-in­formed, safe­ty-con­scious, and hu­man­i­ty-kind cit­i­zen.

It is a re­al shame that, right now, they are in­stead more like­ly to be show­ing what sci­en­tif­ic ig­no­rance, be­lief in fake news, law-break­ing, and the use of de­cep­tive words look like.

It is both trag­ic and sad that, in a few years from now, when asked by stu­dents in class what they did when the dead­lier Delta coro­n­avirus vari­ant reached T&T, all the teach­ers who joined the strike will be able to say is “I turned off my com­put­er.”

They can do bet­ter. And their stu­dents def­i­nite­ly de­serve bet­ter, too.