Ger­ry Kan­galee, ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer, Na­tion­al Work­ers Union (NWU), be­lieves that 2011 was a "con­fronta­tion­al" pe­ri­od for labour."The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the State and or­gan­ised labour de­te­ri­o­rat­ed rapid­ly when it be­came clear that the Gov­ern­ment was in­tent on im­ple­ment­ing a pol­i­cy of wage sup­pres­sion. This was ex­ac­er­bat­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an blow­ing hot and cold about the state of the econ­o­my. It forced the dif­fer­ent wings of the labour move­ment to unite."

He ar­gued that unions adopt­ed the Labour Day Ac­cord call­ing for mil­i­tant ac­tion and pos­si­ble shut­down, but call­ing the state of emer­gency stopped this."This ef­fec­tive­ly threw a spoke in the unions' mo­bil­i­sa­tion wheel. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship spoke about putting work­ers at the cen­tre of de­vel­op­ment. This now sounds like a sick joke. There has been job loss­es at TTPost, WASA and oth­er ar­eas of the pub­lic sec­tor. Do­mes­tic work­ers have not at­tained the de­cent work sta­tus as they strug­gle to have the Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) Con­ven­tion 189."

He added that the Peo­ple Part­ner­ship's man­i­festo spoke about labour law re­form of key pieces of leg­is­la­tion: the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fit Act, Com­pa­nies Act, re­peal of the Work­men's Com­pen­sa­tion Act, among oth­ers, but, to date, none has been dealt with."None of these has been im­ple­ment­ed. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship has man­i­fest­ly re­neged on their man­i­festo po­si­tions on the labour move­ment."

Kan­galee said any­thing is pos­si­ble when the state of emer­gency ends."The lead­er­ship of the trade unions will be ex­pect­ed to in­ten­si­fy their calls for mass ac­tion. How the rank and file re­sponds is go­ing to be crit­i­cal. Has the mo­men­tum been lost be­cause of the re­stric­tions of the state of emer­gency?" he asked.

In Au­gust, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion ac­cept­ed the Gov­ern­ment's five per cent of­fer. The PSA went on to do the same for work­ers of the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, WASA and the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty.On the five per cent is­sue, he ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing work­ers pay for the bad econ­o­my.

"The Gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy of wage sup­pres­sion is cen­tral to its strat­e­gy of mak­ing the work­er pay for the fall­out of the eco­nom­ic cri­sis. The eco­nom­ic neo-lib­er­al pol­i­cy which Dook­er­an so en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pur­sues will brook noth­ing less."

Kan­galee said the Gov­ern­ment's Colour Me Or­ange pro­gramme is "PN­Mism with­out the PNM.""It is de­signed to buy time for the Gov­ern­ment and to pump mon­ey in­to the re­tail sec­tor dur­ing the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons so that the mer­chants who fi­nanced the PP will be able to re­coup some of their state of emer­gency loss­es."He com­pared lo­cal labour en­vi­ron­ment to what is hap­pen­ing glob­al­ly.

"The in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal­ist eco­nom­ic cri­sis is in­ten­si­fy­ing the class strug­gle all over the world. The sur­vival of this sys­tem is un­der cri­sis as it lurch­es from cri­sis to cri­sis. They own­ers of cap­i­tal have re­sort­ed to mak­ing work­ers pay for the cri­sis. They cre­at­ed pri­vati­sa­tion, down­swing of the pub­lic sec­tor, re­trench­ment, wage sup­pres­sion and cut­ting pen­sions. All things be­ing equal, that is our fu­ture in T&T. Of course, all things are not equal and work­ing peo­ple have the abil­i­ty to de­rail this."

Kan­galee ex­pects the Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue "in­tim­i­dat­ing" unions in 2012."The strat­e­gy of mak­ing work­ers pay for the strat­e­gy will con­tin­ue. The Gov­ern­ment strat­e­gy of se­duc­ing/in­tim­i­dat­ing weak­er union lead­er­ships in­to ac­cept­ing five per cent. This is cou­pled with send­ing par­tic­u­lar ne­go­ti­a­tions to the in­dus­tri­al court, like T&TEC. The court, be­ing a court of norms and prece­dent, will take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that some unions have ac­cept­ed the five per cent and ar­bi­trate on that ba­sis."

He al­so pre­dicts the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue pri­vatis­ing state as­sets in 2012."An­oth­er gov­ern­ment strat­e­gy is the di­vest­ment/pri­vati­sa­tion of state en­ter­pris­es. This will re­sult in re­trench­ment, in­creased job se­cu­ri­ty, an­oth­er trans­fer (Cli­co was one such) of the in­come of the gen­er­al cit­i­zen­ry in­to the pock­ets of the cap­i­tal­ists, do­mes­tic and for­eign and the loss of val­ue pro­duc­ing as­sets down the road. The in­tend­ed pri­vati­sa­tion of the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance (TTMF) and Home Mort­gage Bank will dri­ve mort­gage rates be­yond the reach of the mid­dle-class and in­ten­si­fy the hous­ing cri­sis."