Raphael John-Lall

The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (Natuc) wants the Gov­ern­ment to ur­gent­ly re­view the labour laws in the coun­try to en­sure that in­dus­tri­al peace is main­tained. This was one of the re­quests that Natuc made to the Gov­ern­ment last week in a doc­u­ment with de­tails of rec­om­men­da­tions for the an­nu­al na­tion­al bud­get.

Natuc pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette de­liv­ered the doc­u­ment to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai last week as part of the on­go­ing pre-bud­get con­sul­ta­tions at the Min­istry of Fi­nance. Natuc stat­ed in the doc­u­ment: "We note that there are many pieces of leg­is­la­tion that re­quire ur­gent re­view to en­sure that T&T has a mod­ern func­tion­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions frame­work, which is a key el­e­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness for all coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly de­vel­op­ing coun­tries like T&T."

Natuc is the largest trade union body in the coun­try which rep­re­sents 150,000 work­ers and 300 bar­gain­ing units. Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, two as­pects of labour leg­is­la­tion that re­quires "ur­gent at­ten­tion" are up­dat­ing the Work­men's Com­pen­sa­tion Act and a "com­pre­hen­sive re­view" of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA) which gov­erns the en­tire in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions sys­tem in the coun­try.

An­nisette al­so said the Gov­ern­ment needs to be cre­ative in the way it runs the econ­o­my and that it must cre­ate jobs as there could be con­tin­ued so­cial un­rest if there is high un­em­ploy­ment on the East West Cor­ri­dor. "The Port of Port-of-Spain is one of the ma­jor provider of jobs for peo­ple along the East West cor­ri­dor and the Gov­ern­ment must make sure that it is run prop­er­ly," he said.

"If this does not hap­pen and peo­ple have no jobs then there will be un­rest and oth­er so­cial ills." An­nisette al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment and em­ploy­ers to work with unions as the tri­par­tite sys­tem is im­por­tant in hav­ing in­dus­tri­al peace. "Natuc is of the view that it is on­ly when labour re­la­tions are har­mo­nious and work­ers en­joy high­er eco­nom­ic and so­cial sta­tus will work­ers be mo­ti­vat­ed and equipped with the nec­es­sary con­di­tions to learn and achieve de­vel­op­ment," he said.

Natuc's pre-bud­get doc­u­ment al­so notes that while T&T's econ­o­my has not been im­pact­ed as bad­ly as oth­er coun­tries, all the re­sources of the coun­try must be used to de­vel­op the coun­try. "In this en­vi­ron­ment, it is crit­i­cal that all re­sources of the coun­try are brought to bear in the coun­try's eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment," An­nisette said.