Amidst ru­mours that Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke was pre­pared to sign a five per cent deal with man­age­ment, work­ers of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) held a protest yes­ter­day. The protest took place dur­ing work­ers' lunch hour out­side of NIB's head of­fice on Cipri­ani Boule­vard, Port-of-Spain. Ac­cord­ing to em­ploy­ees, a ru­mour had been cir­cu­lat­ing that man­age­ment had made an of­fer of a five per cent in­crease to the union. The ru­mour stat­ed that Duke would sign the agree­ment with­out con­sult­ing with work­ers, some­thing work­ers de­scribed as un­der­hand­ed but char­ac­ter­is­tic of the union leader. Dur­ing the hour-long protest, Duke was nowhere to be found and calls to his mo­bile phone went unan­swered.

Work­ers marched in cir­cles around the build­ing, shout­ing and singing union songs while hold­ing plac­ards stat­ing their grous­es, the most vis­i­ble be­ing the five per cent of­fer on the bar­gain­ing ta­ble. Plac­ards read: "My work eth­ic and val­ue is worth more than five per cent" and "Wat­son Duke. Five per cent No Way". Ac­cord­ing to mem­ber of the PSA sec­tion com­mit­tee Ter­rence Reg­is, work­ers were ask­ing for salaries com­pa­ra­ble with oth­er mem­bers of the fi­nan­cial sec­tor. He said work­ers felt the NIB was more than ca­pa­ble of meet­ing salary de­mands and saw no rea­son why the board seemed in­sis­tent on five per cent.