Ali­cia Llanos

An­nisette, a for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment sen­a­tor, claimed unions were be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed against based on their po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance. Re­gard­ing the five per cent wage in­creas­es be­ing of­fered to all unions, An­nisette said: "When you have a so­ci­ety of peo­ple who get paid on a Fri­day and by the time all their bills paid, their salaries are done by Mon­day, you cause a num­ber of so­cial ills." Join­ing An­nisette on In­de­pen­dence Square was NUGFW pres­i­dent James Lam­bert, who con­grat­u­lat­ed the crowd for keep­ing a peace­ful march. Lam­bert said the unions had cho­sen to wear white be­cause white rep­re­sent­ed peace. He said the unions were ask­ing for peace­ful dis­cus­sions with the Prime Min­is­ter.

Lam­bert said NUGFW met with the Gov­ern­ment's Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Stephanie Lewis on Wednes­day, where Lewis in­di­cat­ed to the union they would not move from the five per cent wage in­crease for the pe­ri­od 2008 to 2010. He said the unions were call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to in­ter­vene and re­move Win­ston Dook­er­an from his post as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. Lam­bert said union lead­ers rep­re­sent­ed by Natuc would meet on Feb­ru­ary 2 to dis­cuss fu­ture ac­tions.