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Friday, July 11, 2025

The changing face of labour in T&T

by

20140216

Fabi­an Pierre.

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) says em­ploy­ers are on a dri­ve–sup­port­ed by es­tab­lished busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions–to re­duce work­ers' ben­e­fits which trade unions have fought for over many years. Fol­low­ing a break down in talks with TSTT last De­cem­ber over their 2008��2012 col­lec­tive agree­ment, CWU pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my claimed there was an on­go­ing na­tion­al ef­fort to de­stroy CO­LA by in­dex­a­tion.

"This isn't about TSTT (on­ly), this is about the em­ploy­er class wag­ing a class war against the work­ing class. It is a na­tion­al ef­fort fund­ed and sup­port­ed by the ECA, the TTMA and the cham­bers against CO­LA by in­dex­a­tion." Re­my said.

The Em­ploy­er's Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) and TSTT have both de­nied Re­my's claim. In a state­ment to the Sun­day Guardian, TSTT said it is not against CO­LA by in­dex­a­tion and has in­clud­ed it in all wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. The ECA said it is nei­ther en­gaged in fund­ing nor sup­port­ing a na­tion­al ef­fort against CO­LA by in­dex­a­tion, adding that the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) was the first to ac­cept fixed-rate CO­LA.

"And this is a dan­ger­ous thing," said John Julien of the CWU. CO­LA by in­dex­a­tion, he ex­plained, takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in­fla­tion and is worked out us­ing the re­tail prices in­dex, work­ing in favour of em­ploy­ees. The CWU deputy pres­i­dent said fixed-rate CO­LA works in favour of em­ploy­ers, as the rate stays con­stant no mat­ter how high in­fla­tion fig­ures rise."With fixed-rate CO­LA, work­ers don't have any kind of buffer against a ris­ing cost of liv­ing," Julien said.

The ECA said pri­or to 1987, most col­lec­tive agree­ments pro­vid­ed for CO­LA by in­dex­a­tion. This changed when of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics on the re­tail prices in­dex were not read­i­ly avail­able from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice.The Na­tion­al Work­ers said since CO­LA came in­to be­ing dur­ing World War II, em­ploy­ees of 16 com­pa­nies have lost the al­lowance.

With­in Re­my's ac­cu­sa­tion lie deep­er ques­tions: Is this true? Are the man­agers of cap­i­tal, and the em­ploy­er class, wag­ing a war against the work­ing class? If so, when did this shift in its in­ten­si­ty be­gin?

Long-time ad­ver­saries

"Well, this is noth­ing new you know," says Regi­nald Du­mas, for­mer T&T am­bas­sador to Wash­ing­ton. "For as long as any­one can re­mem­ber, labour has al­ways had its strug­gles."Du­mas told the Sun­day Guardian that when Tubal Uri­ah "Buzz" But­ler led the labour strike of 1937 for oil­field work­ers' rights, he had sup­port from the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, sug­ar work­ers and oth­ers, in­clud­ing To­ba­go. That was im­por­tant, he ex­plained, be­cause of the fu­ture it came to de­ter­mine.

"So that a gen­er­alised an­ti-em­ploy­er sol­i­dar­i­ty, which in large part was al­so a racial and colony-re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty, helped in the for­ma­tion of the OW­TU short­ly there­after., Du­mas said.

What went wrong

The CWU's Julien, MSJ po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah, and Du­mas all agree, that the 1980s was the decade that set the stage for the ma­jor shift in em­ploy­er at­ti­tudes, the econ­o­my and the idea of na­tion­al­ism in T&T. More specif­i­cal­ly,Ab­du­lah said, it was the in­ter­ven­tion of the IMF, the IDB and the World Bank in the late 1980s and ear­ly 1990s that sparked the change.

He said the dom­i­nant think­ing of pri­vati­sa­tion, re­trench­ment, use of con­tract labour, dereg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of the econ­o­my and ad­just­ment to gov­ern­ment poli­cies led to a cut in the spend­ing pow­er of cit­i­zens. These changes, Julien said, al­so changed em­ploy­ees."I mean, I don't want to sound...you know, but it has be­come like a greedy so­ci­ety...to an ex­tent. We are say­ing that we are giv­ing a fair day's work for a fair day's pay and we are ex­pect­ing a fair day's pay."

Julien said em­ploy­ees no longer work for the love of the job, but rather to make ends meet. He said work­ers have be­come in­creas­ing­ly cyn­i­cal, not on­ly in pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions but es­pe­cial­ly in the pub­lic sec­tor."So what do you ex­pect when you have an em­ploy­er which is the Gov­ern­ment, who is free spend­ing, and there­fore you look­ing to say, 'Where am I go­ing to get some­thing?' I'm not see­ing any­thing, but yet still you're telling me work 120 per cent to get 60 per cent wages."

The fu­ture of labour

The CWU sees a grim fu­ture for labour in T&T. How­ev­er, Du­mas be­lieves hos­til­i­ties can be calmed if par­ties come to­geth­er in the in­ter­est of the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment."We need to look at a so­cial com­pact, much like Bar­ba­dos has. In Bar­ba­dos, there is a so­cial com­pact among busi­ness, labour and gov­ern­ment and it has worked very well for them, though, sur­pris­ing­ly, it seems not to have been in­voked re­cent­ly by the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment be­fore it an­nounced deep cuts in the pub­lic ser­vice man­dat­ed by the IMF.

"We in Trinidad and To­ba­go have tried a kind of so­cial com­pact that we called tri­par­tism–gov­ern­ment, busi­ness and labour sit­ting and dis­cussing to­geth­er. But one promi­nent labour leader, one who was deeply in­volved in such dis­cus­sions, told me many years ago that tri­par­tism didn't work be­cause each par­ty came to the ta­ble with its own agen­da and pur­sued that agen­da re­gard­less of the coun­try's best in­ter­ests.

"There was no com­pro­mis­ing: my way or the high­way. No one said, 'Lis­ten, this is the state of the econ­o­my...we may not be able to af­ford 20 per cent in­creas­es but here's what we can do.'"Now peo­ple need to act quick­ly and dif­fer­ent­ly, es­pe­cial­ly in the light of pro­duc­tion and ex­ports of oil and nat­ur­al gas in­creas­ing and com­pet­ing with ours, thus pos­si­bly lead­ing to de­clines in our na­tion­al in­come."

At the Peo­ple's Sum­mit or­gan­ised in 2009 to co­in­cide with the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, Ab­du­lah called for a so­cial com­pact to al­low all par­ties not on­ly a sense of calm but one of ben­e­fit and growth for all, a po­si­tion he still main­tains.Up to press time, nei­ther the TTMA nor the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce had re­spond­ed to re­quests for com­ment on the CWU's state­ment.

TSTT said it does not see any ad­ver­sar­i­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween the com­pa­ny and its em­ploy­ees, adding that while telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions is not a labour in­ten­sive in­dus­try but a high­ly tech­ni­cal one, it sees train­ing and de­vel­op­ment of its staff as in­te­gral to the com­pa­ny's de­vel­op­ment.The mat­ter be­tween TSTT and the CWU is sched­uled to be heard at the In­dus­tri­al Court in a con­tin­u­ing saga that labour lead­ers claim is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of prof­it at the ex­pense of labour.


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