Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum to the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Davlin Thomas Fri­day, but a po­ten­tial walk­out by the work­ers was quelled fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween the two men.

How­ev­er, be­fore the meet­ing, Duke had called for out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions for the year 2015, 2016 and 2017 to be set­tled by 1 pm Fri­day.

“Pay the ar­rears for 15, 16 and 17 now. Two, give us a date when all work­ers will be made per­ma­nent who have sat­is­fied two years or more. Three, give us a bonus. I feel a good bonus is $3,000 across the board," said Duke, who called for the bonus­es af­ter hear­ing com­plaints from work­ers who had tak­en ex­tra shifts due to re­cent staff short­ages dur­ing a meet­ing near the Main En­trance of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex, Mt Hope.

He added, "We are giv­ing the CEO 1 o'clock, 1 pm. He had the en­tire year to fix this. One pm he has now to put us in that place of com­fort and that place of fi­nan­cial ease. If not, then we will have to get up, leave the jobs and as the youth will say go and look for it."

That meet­ing was moved from di­rect­ly in front of the Mt Hope Hos­pi­tal main en­trance af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers stat­ed me­dia cam­eras would break the da­ta pro­tec­tion act should they film Duke while he was speak­ing to work­ers there.

Duke briefly ar­gued that the me­dia would on­ly be film­ing the PSA mem­bers gath­ered but ul­ti­mate­ly agreed to move the meet­ing a short dis­tance away from the en­trance.

Fol­low­ing the meet­ing, which fin­ished at around 11.20 am, Duke and the group of work­ers walked across to the CEO's of­fice.

Be­fore lead­ing the work­ers across, Duke again said should they fail to re­ceive a favourable re­sponse the work­ers would take a shop­ping day im­me­di­ate­ly.

Speak­ing hours af­ter the meet­ing, the NCRHA chair­man said Duke was up­dat­ed on the sit­u­a­tion.

"The pres­i­dent of PSA found our ap­proach and progress to be rea­son­able," said Thomas, in a text re­sponse to the Trinidad & To­ba­go Guardian lat­er Fri­day.

At­tempts to reach Duke for com­ment fol­low­ing the meet­ing were un­suc­cess­ful.