With Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al start­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions with unions and as­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing pub­lic ser­vice work­ers, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion has writ­ten to the CPO and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ex­press­ing con­cern.

Ac­cord­ing to TTR­NA Pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art, while the as­so­ci­a­tion ap­pre­ci­ates the Gov­ern­ment’s en­gage­ment with them in the past, he is hop­ing that the TTR­NA will be en­gaged to rep­re­sent nurs­es as they seek a salary in­crease this time around.

He said while nurs­es, like most pub­lic ser­vice work­ers, are work­ing on 2013 salaries, re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty staff are not con­sid­ered pub­lic ser­vice work­ers be­cause they are em­ployed on a con­trac­tu­al ba­sis.

“We hope good sense will pre­vail and nurs­es and mid­wives don’t have to en­gage in in­dus­tri­al ac­tion or any type of in­dus­tri­al un­rest to de­mand in­creas­es that oth­er sec­tors are go­ing to be ben­e­fit­ing from,” Stu­art said.

COLM IMBERT

Abraham-Diaz

“Legal­ly, the PSA can­not rep­re­sent the health work­ers as they are de­barred from do­ing so un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act. So, if they are legal­ly de­barred, then un­der­stand­ably one would ex­pect the TTR­NA to take up that man­tle and we’ve al­ready pre­pared our draft col­lec­tive agree­ment which our mem­bers are cur­rent­ly review­ing.”

Stu­art called the Fi­nance Min­istry’s an­nounce­ment of ne­go­ti­a­tions with pub­lic ser­vice work­ers as a bless­ing and a source of ap­pre­hen­sion.

He said the TTR­NA, de­spite its best ef­forts, is not of­fi­cial­ly recog­nised by the Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board as the ma­jor­i­ty union for nurs­es and mid­wives.

“How­ev­er, we hope the Gov­ern­ment doesn’t utilise the loop­hole that they have cre­at­ed…as an av­enue to de­ny the abil­i­ty of nurs­ing per­son­nel to get that much-need­ed in­crease in salary,” The TTR­NA pres­i­dent said.

“The past min­is­ter of health, Dr Fuad Khan, would have re­mind­ed re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties that we are no longer part of the pub­lic ser­vice. So, we would not en­joy any of the ne­go­ti­a­tions in­volv­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion…But we hope they al­low nurs­ing per­son­nel some lat­i­tude and al­low the TTR­NA to ne­go­ti­ate on their be­half al­so.”

Stu­art said, hav­ing writ­ten to the CPO and Fi­nance Min­is­ter to ex­press their con­cerns, the as­so­ci­a­tion looks for­ward to a meet­ing to dis­cuss its opin­ion in a more sub­stan­tial man­ner.

It is ex­pect­ed that in the com­ing weeks, the CPO will meet with 11 unions and as­so­ci­a­tions to en­gage in ne­go­ti­a­tions for re­vised terms and con­di­tions for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90,000 pub­lic ser­vice em­ploy­ees–most of whom are said to be on 2013 salaries.

On March 28, the CPO met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice.

The PSA met vir­tu­al­ly with the CPO on Fri­day.

On April 4, the CPO is ex­pect­ed to meet with unions rep­re­sent­ing dai­ly paid work­ers, while on April 7, Dr Din­di­al will meet with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion.