Rapheal John-Lall

The Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern that pro­posed amend­ments to the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA) cur­rent­ly be­ing de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will have a grave im­pact on em­ploy­ers.The group said giv­en the sig­nif­i­cance and po­ten­tial im­pact of the bill there should be con­sul­ta­tion with key stake­hold­ers.

"The pro­posed amend­ments to the IRA pose sev­er­al is­sues and lack rea­son­able ra­tio­nale for such changes," the ECA said in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day."One such pro­posed change is the ex­ten­sion of the time­frame for a trade dis­pute from six months to two years. The ECA be­lieves that this change does not en­cour­age work­ers nor their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to ad­dress their claims in a time­ly man­ner.

"In ad­di­tion, the bill does not ad­dress the con­cerns of em­ploy­ers as it re­lates to fraud­u­lent med­ical cer­tifi­cates, sec­tion 77 (1) found in the cur­rent IRA. More so, the bill seeks to cre­ate a new au­thor­i­ty, the Con­cil­i­a­tion and Me­di­a­tion Ser­vice (CAMS) which seems to have the same re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the ex­ist­ing con­cil­i­a­tion de­part­ment of the Min­istry of Labour."

The ECA wants Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod to "do the need­ful" and al­low stake­hold­ers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide com­ments and feed­back on the leg­is­la­tion."The ECA is in the process of en­gag­ing its mem­ber­ship as we be­lieve that this amend­ment, no doubt, would im­pact em­ploy­ers grave­ly. This bill is too crit­i­cal and there­fore would re­quire qual­i­ty time to de­lib­er­ate and col­lab­o­rate with its mem­bers and oth­er stake­hold­ers," the group said.

The bill has al­so drawn crit­i­cism from trade union lead­ers who said they were not con­sult­ed be­fore it was laid in Par­lia­ment.The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) yes­ter­day hand de­liv­ered a let­ter to McLeod ask­ing him to clar­i­fy some of the claus­es in the bill. JTUM wants McLeod to back off on the bill un­til con­sul­ta­tions are held with trade unions.

Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get, who head­ed the JTUM del­e­ga­tion that went to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to de­liv­er the let­ter, said the group had not been con­sult­ed on the bill and there is con­fu­sion over the con­se­quences of some of its pro­vi­sion."If al­lowed to pass and be­come law, this bill will be the be­gin­ning of the end of the trade union move­ment in T&T," he told re­porters out­side the Par­lia­ment Build­ing.

He said a na­tion­al con­fer­ence of shop stew­ards and branch of­fi­cers has been sched­uled for May 25 to dis­cuss the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the leg­is­la­tion."Any gov­ern­ment that seeks to de­stroy the trade union move­ment will feel the wrath of the labour move­ment. To come up with a bill of this na­ture speaks vol­umes about the lack of sup­port for the gov­ern­ment from the trade union move­ment. This is just elec­tion­eer­ing gim­mick­ry," Ro­get said.