“There was no un­der-the-ta­ble deal and the union is not a sell-out.”

Those were the words of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union pres­i­dent Michael Pren­tice yes­ter­day, as he de­fend­ed his union’s de­ci­sion to ac­cept the 4 per cent wage in­crease of­fer from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.

His com­ments came mo­ments af­ter the CPO’s of­fice an­nounced that the AWU had ac­cept­ed the of­fer.

The state­ment re­vealed that the union and CPO had signed Col­lec­tive Agree­ments for the pe­ri­ods 2014-2016 and 2017-2019 and that they had met five times, plus vir­tu­al­ly, over the past six months and had dis­cussed sev­er­al out­stand­ing is­sues af­fect­ing union mem­bers.

The CPO’s of­fice said the ne­go­ti­a­tions in­clud­ed a new job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise for work­ers of the union, the align­ment of rates of pre­mi­ums and al­lowances en­joyed by oth­er dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers and an in­crease of those rates, an in­crease in the rate of Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance, the pro­vi­sion of tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing and a one-time buy­out for re­tirees in 2014 and 2015 at $4,000 per re­tiree.

The Gov­ern­ment’s four per cent wage of­fer has not sat well with oth­er unions and as­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

They have all re­ject­ed the of­fer, which was in­creased from the orig­i­nal 2 per cent of­fer, even stag­ing a protest on Au­gust 12 in Port-of-Spain against it.

But de­fend­ing his union’s de­ci­sion, Pren­tice told Guardian Me­dia, “It has a lot more to it. It is not that you just sign for 4%, you just don’t go sign for some­thing and walk out be­cause there are plen­ty of oth­er things that we agreed to that is a huge ben­e­fit to the work­ers.

“As in­de­pen­dent trade unions, we have de­ci­sions to be made and a lot of re­search could go in­to what­ev­er we may or may not agree to in prin­ci­ple, so it is not about go­ing against the trade union move­ment, it is an ex­er­cise which all trade unions have their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ne­go­ti­ate and if my union is not in sync with what is hap­pen­ing, we are free as an in­de­pen­dent trade union to re­spond in a par­tic­u­lar way.”

Pren­tice al­so de­nied he was a sell-out.

“What we did was le­git­i­mate for the work­ers in our union,” Pren­tice added.

Asked if his de­ci­sion was sim­i­lar to for­mer PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke’s de­ci­sion in 2011 to ac­cept a 5% of­fer from the then-gov­ern­ment, Pren­tice said there is no com­par­i­son.

“Duke had a deal that no­body knew of and the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union has no deal with no one. We ne­go­ti­at­ed along the en­tire process to find ways and means to bring clo­sure to a chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion as it re­lates to work­ers work­ing on 2013 salaries and deal with this mat­ter that is present and a de­ci­sion has to be made. I can’t tell any union how to ne­go­ti­ate but we went to ne­go­ti­ate in the in­ter­est of the work­ers.”

The AWU rep­re­sents Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion work­ers among oth­ers. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands oth­er trade unions held an emer­gency meet­ing fol­low­ing the CPO’s an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day and will ad­dress the mat­ter to­day.