Michelle Loubon

Pres­i­dent of the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers' Union (BIG­WU) Vin­cent Cabr­era says the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (Natuc) is fail­ing to pro­vide any form of re­al lead­er­ship to the trade union move­ment. He made that com­ment while ad­dress­ing the union's fourth bi­en­ni­al con­fer­ence of del­e­gates, at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann's, over the week­end. Cabr­era said: "BIG­WU does not have time to waste. We can­not con­tin­ue to pay dues to an or­gan­i­sa­tion which seems to have lost its way and which is fail­ing to pro­vide any form of re­al lead­er­ship to the trade union move­ment. "Natuc has be­come a pale shade of its for­mer self. The leader (Michael An­nisette) seems to have dis­ap­peared from pub­lic at­ten­tion. "Natuc's present leader emerged as a ma­jor spokesman for Ude­cott and Calder Hart," added Cabr­era.

He al­so claimed that An­nisette had said he would not as­so­ciate with trade union lead­ers be­long­ing to the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and Non Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (Fi­tun). He added: "The rea­son ad­vanced for this is the ques­tion of il­le­gal poach­ing. While we all must recog­nise that work­ers must be free to join a trade union of their choice, if all trade unions are or­gan­i­sa­tion­al­ly uni­fied, it will be far eas­i­er to deal with the is­sue of poach­ing."

Cabr­era said BIG­WU's del­e­ga­tion had at­tend­ed the last sched­uled gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing of Natuc. "The pres­i­dent and most of the of­fi­cers of the cen­tral com­mit­tee were ab­sent. A quo­rum could not be achieved in an or­gan­i­sa­tion which is sup­posed to be the ma­jor labour fed­er­a­tion in the coun­try. "Less than a dozen rep­re­sen­ta­tives had gath­ered be­fore the meet­ing was called off," said Cabr­era.

Cli­co de­ba­cle – 'laws against work­ers'

He touched on sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing peo­ple's democ­ra­cy, elec­tions man­i­festo, move­ment for so­cial jus­tice, in­de­pen­dence of trade unions, de­cent work and the Cli­co de­ba­cle. Cabr­era said: "A brief analy­sis of the Cli­co de­ba­cle would show in this coun­try the laws op­er­ate against the in­ter­ests of work­ers. "Whether it is the ill-fat­ed Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act, the Com­pa­nies Act or the Bank­rupt­cy Act, it is tak­en as a giv­en that where a firm or es­tab­lish­ment goes bel­ly up, the low­est pri­or­i­ty is as­signed to work­ers." He said the mat­ter should re­flect our val­ues as a na­tion.

Cabr­era added: "It al­so in­volves moral­i­ty and eth­i­cal con­cerns. Is it moral­ly cor­rect to car­ry out the in­dus­tri­al ex­e­cu­tion?" he asked. "The work­ers should not be blamed or pun­ished for the mis­judg­ment and wrong­do­ing of their cap­i­tal­ist boss­es,"he added.

He al­so said BIG­WU stood to lose a great deal in the Cli­co mat­ter.

He said: "In ad­di­tion to CIB work­ers, we rep­re­sent Cli­co work­ers as well. We al­so rep­re­sent British Amer­i­can em­ploy­ees. "We al­so rep­re­sent the work­ers at Tru Valu and work­ers at Re­pub­lic Bank where a mas­sive chunk of share­hold­ing is owned by CL Fi­nan­cial. We are, there­fore, be­yond a shad­ow of a doubt a ma­jor stake­hold­er." Cabr­era al­so not­ed: "It is more than pass­ing strange that de­spite our re­quest for a meet­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter with the au­thor­i­ties at the Min­istry of Fi­nance, no meet­ing was sched­uled. "The an­nounced merg­er of Cli­co with British Amer­i­can will gen­er­ate job loss­es." He gave them the as­sur­ance the union would go all the way, but "dis­ci­pline must be ap­plied and rea­son­able­ness must guide all con­cerned." Ef­forts to con­tact An­nisette over the past two days on three dif­fer­ent num­bers proved fu­tile.