Richard Lord

?The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) wants the Gov­ern­ment to move im­me­di­ate­ly to stop moves by TSTT and PTSC to de­cer­ti­fy and re­voke the recog­ni­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union (CWU) and the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers' Union, re­spec­tive­ly. The two com­pa­nies have ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion in the In­dus­tri­al Court to de­cer­ti­fy the two unions be­cause of al­leged in­dus­tri­al of­fences car­ried out by their mem­bers.

TSTT work­ers have en­gaged in sus­tained protest ac­tion be­cause of de­lays in the pace of ne­go­ti­a­tions for a new col­lec­tive agree­ment, while 13 PTSC work­ers have been dis­missed for en­gag­ing in protest ac­tion at the City Gate fa­cil­i­ty ear­li­er this month. Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark and MP for Oropouche East Dr Roodal Mooni­lal have both called for the im­me­di­ate re­in­state­ment of the af­fect­ed work­ers at the two com­pa­nies.

They did so dur­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. Mark called on cit­i­zens, trade union­ists, church­es, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions and po­lit­i­cal par­ties to unite to ur­gent­ly re­move the Gov­ern­ment, which he said was an­ti-work­er. Mooni­lal said this op­por­tu­ni­ty should be used to es­tab­lish a move­ment against the Gov­ern­ment "to, in the first in­stance, force those state com­pa­nies to with­draw that ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore the court."

Mooni­lal said un­der the ex­ist­ing In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, Labour Min­is­ter Ren­nie Du­mas could in­ter­vene and re­solve the mat­ter even be­fore be­ing re­quest­ed to do so. Mooni­lal said the sub­stan­tive is­sues in both mat­ters were "dis­putes be­fore the Min­istry of Labour and/or In­dus­tri­al Court, so that no In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Of­fence have been proven, so that both PTSC and TSTT are act­ing pre­ma­ture­ly."