The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) is ques­tion­ing the ra­tio­nale be­hind the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (TSTT) de­ci­sion to ex­pand its top man­age­r­i­al struc­ture, at a time when the com­pa­ny is grap­pling with de­clin­ing rev­enues and on­go­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

On Thurs­day night, in a memo is­sued to staff, the com­pa­ny’s act­ing CEO, Keino Cox, out­lined a new ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture, which he de­scribed as “the start of an im­por­tant new chap­ter in TSTT’s trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney.”

“Our re­aligned ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture is de­signed to re­move in­ef­fi­cien­cies, elim­i­nate over­laps, and en­hance our abil­i­ty to de­liv­er in­no­v­a­tive, cus­tomer-fo­cused so­lu­tions. It’s about en­sur­ing that TSTT is ready to thrive in a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven world, where agili­ty, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty are not op­tion­al; they are es­sen­tial,” Cox wrote.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained the CWU let­ter that was sent to Cox. It not­ed that pri­or to this new re­aligned struc­ture, in a let­ter dat­ed Febu­rary, 1, 2022, the com­pa­ny had ap­plied an­oth­er man­age­r­i­al struc­ture change.

The let­ter to Cox, signed by CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer, not­ed that at that stage, the com­pa­ny’s top-lev­el or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture fea­tured 13 po­si­tions. The re­vised 2022 pro­pos­al re­duced this to 11 po­si­tions, which the CWU said gave the im­pres­sion of a lean­er and more ef­fi­cient mod­el.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny’s lat­est 2025 struc­ture shows a to­tal of 24 po­si­tions, an in­crease of 11 posts from the pre­vi­ous 2022 frame­work.

The CWU de­scribed this as “alarm­ing,” es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the com­pa­ny’s frag­ile fi­nan­cial state. It out­lined that TSTT, like many oth­er re­gion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions op­er­a­tors, has faced mount­ing pres­sures from glob­al eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, rapid tech­no­log­i­cal changes in the sec­tor, and the lin­ger­ing ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. These fac­tors, it said, have com­pound­ed the im­pact of what the union de­scribed as “mis­placed de­ci­sions” at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el.

Ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny dis­clo­sures, rev­enue fell by $453 mil­lion in the fi­nan­cial year end­ing March 2021, drop­ping to $2.045 bil­lion from $2.498 bil­lion in 2020. To ad­dress this, TSTT im­ple­ment­ed cost-cut­ting mea­sures, con­tain­ment of ex­pen­di­ture, and tar­get­ed re­struc­tur­ing aimed at sta­bil­is­ing op­er­a­tions.

De­spite this, the CWU said the lat­est man­age­r­i­al ex­pan­sion ap­pears con­tra­dic­to­ry.

“At a time when the com­pa­ny in­sists that strin­gent fi­nan­cial con­trols are nec­es­sary, it is in­ex­plic­a­ble that the man­age­r­i­al struc­ture has been ex­pand­ed in­stead of stream­lined,” the union ar­gued.

The CWU fur­ther not­ed that while pre­vi­ous re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cis­es dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly im­pact­ed bar­gain­ing unit em­ploy­ees, the new frame­work places ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial strain at the ex­ec­u­tive tier.

The union warned that if left unchecked, TSTT “will con­tin­ue to haem­or­rhage loss­es,” un­der­min­ing the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to re­main com­pet­i­tive in a rapid­ly evolv­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions land­scape.