The shock­ing col­lapse of civ­il dis­course at the PSA on Thurs­day is un­ques­tion­ably a low point in the his­to­ry of the labour move­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go. At 11:00am on Thurs­day, sev­er­al sus­pend­ed ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the PSA stormed a gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing af­ter learn­ing that PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke had re­fused to ad­dress the re­cent sus­pen­sion of their col­league Joanne Sem­per-Ca­pri­et­ta. What fol­lowed would have been un­be­liev­able had it not been record­ed in dis­turb­ing de­tail by the me­dia present. Ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the PSA, clear­ly en­raged by their pres­i­dent, shout­ed and cursed, Duke's pho­to was stripped from the walls and tak­en out of the build­ing to be burned and a mi­cro­phone stand was briefly raised as a weapon.

Duke tried to speak with some of the an­gry ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers be­fore re­tir­ing from the meet­ing to his of­fice, where he is be­lieved to have called Sal­im Muwak­il, an as­so­ciate of Yasin Abu Bakr dur­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, who came to the build­ing short­ly there­after with an­oth­er man in an im­plied se­cu­ri­ty role. Armed of­fi­cers from the Guard and Emer­gency branch would lat­er en­ter the build­ing and at­tempt to speak with the PSA pres­i­dent, who re­fused to talk to them. They re­mained on the premis­es while the usurped gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing pro­ceed­ed and were still present when Muwak­il re­turned with a larg­er con­tin­gent of six as­so­ciates. Muwak­il and his new group were es­cort­ed out of the build­ing, searched and tak­en in­to po­lice cus­tody.

There are many as­pects of this col­lapse in lead­er­ship at the PSA that de­mand re­view by calmer heads, and it seems that em­bat­tled pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke may have squan­dered any ca­pac­i­ty to bring ra­tio­nal, rea­soned think­ing to this im­passe. It's hard to imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion in which any or­gan­i­sa­tion would be ex­pect­ed to func­tion nor­mal­ly when its elect­ed leader is so out of sync with his gen­er­al coun­cil, ef­fec­tive­ly the di­rec­torate of the union that half of that team would be sus­pend­ed from ac­tive du­ty. Far too many of these elect­ed of­fi­cers were re­moved from their work­ing po­si­tions for rea­sons that ap­pear to have put them in­to ter­mi­nal con­flict with the union's pres­i­dent, which sug­gests that there are fun­da­men­tal is­sues of man­age­ment process and pro­ce­dure that need to be ad­dressed in the or­gan­i­sa­tion's lead­er­ship struc­ture.

It must be not­ed un­equiv­o­cal­ly, how­ev­er, that Thurs­day's show of phys­i­cal in­tim­i­da­tion and at­tempt at ig­nor­ing the PSA's own con­sti­tu­tion and bye-laws, is not the way that this mat­ter must be re­solved. The "meet­ing" chaired by Ricky Ce­de­no af­ter the forcible oust­ing of Wat­son Duke from an of­fi­cial PSA meet­ing and the sub­se­quent "re­in­state­ment" of sus­pend­ed mem­bers must be dis­missed as the ef­forts at thug­gery that they are. Both Natuc's Michael An­nisette and Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod have ex­pressed con­cern about the in­ci­dent and have called for talks fo­cused on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. McLeod de­scribed the in­ci­dent as "a most dev­as­tat­ing blow against the fam­i­ly of trade unions and the labour move­ment."

It's hard to sum­marise it more suc­cinct­ly than that. The labour move­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go has been re­spon­si­ble for rep­re­sent­ing work­ing cit­i­zens, ne­go­ti­at­ing terms on their be­half and step­ping in when re­la­tion­ships be­tween em­ploy­ee and em­ploy­er go wrong. The PSA, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of pub­lic ser­vants, is a key play­er in the re­la­tion­ships that un­der­pin ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance and is in many ways, one of the piv­otal labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives in this coun­try. It's dou­bly re­gret­table then, that apart from alien­at­ing half of his gen­er­al coun­cil, pres­i­dent Duke has al­so so ir­ri­tat­ed oth­er union lead­ers that they can­not be re­lied on to take a role in the ur­gent­ly need­ed lead­er­ship rec­on­cil­i­a­tion that the PSA needs now.

Michael An­nisette urged that the dis­course be­tween the ri­val fac­tions with­in the PSA not de­gen­er­ate in­to "name call­ing and fin­ger point­ing." Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that ship sailed three days ago. What's need­ed now is the in­ter­ven­tion of se­nior, per­haps re­tired union lead­ers in con­ven­ing con­cil­ia­to­ry talks be­tween the two fac­tions that will lead to the re­sump­tion of ef­fec­tive lead­er­ship that rep­re­sents the best in­ter­ests of the PSA's mem­ber­ship.