Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Thou­sands of dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Cen­tral and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­er work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) will re­ceive a nine per cent wage in­crease for the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od 2008/2010. The work­ers will al­so re­ceive a new Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) of $5.75 a day for 2008 and 2009 and $6.60 a day for 2010.

NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al James Lam­bert made the an­nounce­ment at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the union's Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice. He said the 2011/2013 ne­go­ti­a­tions will start short­ly. "As you are aware, our ne­go­ti­a­tions start­ed in 2008, and all the non-cost items had been agreed up­on...as it re­lates to wages, all of us are aware that a five per cent cap was placed for all gov­ern­ment agen­cies through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go," Lam­bert said.

"We cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject­ed the five per cent and we de­cid­ed that we will con­tin­ue to ne­go­ti­ate on be­half of the dai­ly rat­ed work­ers be­cause we felt that five per cent could not have been an ac­cept­able of­fer by the chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer through the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go." He said a CO­LA?of $4 a day was paid to work­ers in the last col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od of 2005/2007. He said when the unions con­sol­i­dat­ed, they re­alised the CPO was "play­ing games."

He said they were not re­ceiv­ing the same rate but now, un­der the new agree­ment, there will be no dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed CO­LA. The union al­so cut the rib­bon to its re­fur­bished con­fer­ence room which was named af­ter Lam­bert.