Richard Lord

Af­ter a three-hour closed door dis­cus­sion with 19 trade union lead­ers at her St Clair of­fice yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar shut­down the meet­ing, claim­ing she could not agree to de­clare that there was a re­moval of the five per cent cap on wages for new col­lec­tive agree­ments.Per­sad-Bisses­sar was speak­ing with re­porters fol­low­ing the marathon meet­ing. She and new head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, Reynold Coop­er, met with the lead­ers.Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my, Dr Bhoen­dra­dath Tewarie, Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan and Min­is­ter in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Rudranath In­dars­ingh at­tend­ed the meet­ing as ad­vis­ers to the PM.She had said ear­li­er there was no five per cent cap on wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

She said progress was made on sev­er­al of the oth­er mat­ters raised by the labour lead­ers dur­ing the meet­ing but dis­cus­sions con­tin­ued on the so called five per cent cap in the end.She added: "I was placed in a po­si­tion where I was be­ing asked to de­clare that there is a re­moval of the five per cent cap."At this point I felt that I would now be ne­go­ti­at­ing what should be dealt with by the var­i­ous em­ploy­ers."And I could not ac­cede to that re­quest. I re­peat­ed to them there is no five per cent cap; go to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble and ne­go­ti­ate there with the em­ploy­ers with­in the frame­work of the abil­i­ty of the em­ploy­ers to pay."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "If it were that I had re­moved this five per cent cap then they would go to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble, start­ing at five per cent and then I would have en­tered in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions with them."That's where we agreed to dis­agree and I sug­gest­ed that we ter­mi­nate the meet­ing be­cause we were not go­ing fur­ther."Per­sad-Bisses­sar added fur­ther meet­ings could be sched­uled with the labour lead­ers.Asked if the meet­ing broke down over the five per cent cap is­sue, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "Yes, on that is­sue there was no res­o­lu­tion. You are cor­rect on that point."Asked if the mat­ter re­mained un­re­solved, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said:

"It is un­re­solved from the unions' point of view. They are not pre­pared to ac­cept what I sug­gest­ed, which is let us wipe the slate clean, start from ze­ro on the ta­ble clean, ne­go­ti­ate your way up­wards as far as your rel­e­vant em­ploy­er has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to pay."Asked if the meet­ing end­ed with any as­sur­ance that the threat­ened na­tion­al strike by the work­ers had been re­moved, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there would be no na­tion­al strike be­cause pub­lic ser­vants and em­ploy­ees of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) had their mat­ters set­tled al­ready.She in­sist­ed: "There is not go­ing to be a na­tion­al strike. There will be a strike of some work­ers, not a gen­er­al, na­tion­al strike.

"I am not of the view that there will be a na­tion­al, gen­er­al strike where the whole coun­try is shut­down, I am not of that view."She added that con­tin­gency plans would be in place for those work­ers who en­gaged in strike ac­tion.The work­ers, who num­bered about 1,000, left the streets sur­round­ing the PM's of­fice lit­tered with bot­tles, plac­ards and oth­er de­bris.Hours ear­li­er, when OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get ar­rived he walked and greet­ed the work­ers. "Are you ready, are you ready? Are you ready for war?" he was heard ask­ing the work­ers. Work­ers re­spond­ed: "We will take off the lights, turn off the wa­ter. We will shut the coun­try down."

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Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the meet­ing reached agree­ment on sev­er­al de­mands made by the trade unions. They in­clud­ed:

-labour leg­is­la­tion and re­lat­ed mat­ters, She said sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion were to be brought to Par­lia­ment for ap­proval in due course;

-land use pol­i­cy for Trinidad and To­ba­go;

-agri­cul­tur­al pol­i­cy;

-con­sti­tu­tion re­form; and,

-youth pol­i­cy. She said it was be­ing re­viewed and con­sul­ta­tions were to con­tin­ue in that re­gard.