Sean Nero

Cit­i­zens are be­ing warned to brace for an­oth­er wave of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, this time from the T&T Postal Union, as mem­bers de­cide an ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse to a plan by the T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion that might put hun­dreds of em­ploy­ees on the bread­line.

A pi­lot pro­gramme be­ing re­ferred to as Day-Plus-Three, sched­uled for im­ple­men­ta­tion in the dis­tricts of Ari­ma and Princes Town from as ear­ly as to­mor­row, is the cause for much trep­i­da­tion with­in the postal com­mu­ni­ty, said union gen­er­al sec­re­tary Regi­nald Critchlow. Fifty-one tem­po­rary re­lief of­fi­cers and 49 con­tract em­ploy­ees could get the axe un­der the new sys­tem.

Critchlow said there are close to 490 de­liv­ery routes in the postal sys­tem, al­though the ap­proved struc­ture refers to 439. Ari­ma, which has 20 dis­tricts, was be­ing ser­viced with 17 per­ma­nent work­ers, which ac­cord­ing to union of­fi­cials, was be­ing re­duced to just ten.

"The im­pact it will have on these two sec­tors of work­ers, ob­vi­ous­ly the per­ma­nent staff, has be­come very ag­i­tat­ed like Jack Spaniard. So if they are go­ing to op­er­ate Ari­ma with ten per­ma­nent works, we want to know at what point the oth­ers then will find a rest­ing place?" he asked.

TTPost plans were dis­cussed yes­ter­day at an emer­gency meet­ing con­vened by the union at the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) lo­cat­ed on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain. The mem­ber­ship was now prepar­ing to chal­lenge the pro­pos­al.

Ac­cord­ing to the new plan, mail col­lect­ed and de­posit­ed at the Na­tion­al Mail cen­tre at Pi­ar­co, will not be sort­ed overnight any­more. In­stead, it may take as long as three days to process, con­se­quent­ly im­pact­ing the dis­patch pe­ri­od to dis­trict of­fices across T&T, ul­ti­mate­ly de­lay­ing the time it reach­es the re­ceiv­er. News of the plans to scrap the orig­i­nal Day-Plus-One sys­tem reached the desk of the union leader on June 27.

He said judg­ing from the im­ple­men­ta­tion date, the ex­ec­u­tive of the Postal Cor­po­ra­tion tried to en­sure the union could not de­vel­op an ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse. Critchlow said: "The work­ers have in­di­cat­ed that they are go­ing to take charge of this and they will in­form the lead­er­ship of this or­gan­i­sa­tion what are their plans, and how and when they in­tend to im­ple­ment it.

"They are sup­posed to get back to us by Mon­day morn­ing...This is their call. This is their bat­tle. We are there to guide them. What­ev­er they wish to en­gage in, they will in­form us of that."