NADALEEN SINGH

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mustapha Ab­dul-hamid yes­ter­day con­firmed that Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) has for­mal­ly dis­con­tin­ued the le­gal ac­tion against the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU).

"I spoke to the chair­man on the phone around mid­day to­day (Fri­day). When I spoke to him, they had al­ready with­drawn the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence. I ar­tic­u­lat­ed to them what the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion was," Ab­dul-hamid said.

Ab­dul-Hamid de­scribed the con­ver­sa­tion with TSTT chair­man Samuel Mar­tin as a "pleas­ant" one. Mean­while, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne said the line min­is­ters for TSTT and the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vices Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC), the sec­ond State en­ter­prise which had ap­plied for de­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the rep­re­sen­ta­tive union, Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU), were not in­formed of the de­ci­sion tak­en by TSTT and the PTSC when it comes to de­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the bar­gain­ing bod­ies rep­re­sent­ing work­ers. "The line min­is­ters were not in­formed. We ex­pect if ex­treme ac­tion is meant to be tak­en, then we need to be in­formed. It's how it will im­pact the rest of our po­si­tion. In the event that we were not in­formed, we took the nec­es­sary ac­tion to cor­rect it," Browne said.

The line min­is­ter for PTSC is Colm Im­bert, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, while Ab­dul-Hamid is the line min­is­ter for TSTT. Dur­ing Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Browne had said that Gov­ern­ment was not aware of the ac­tion tak­en by the State en­ter­prise (TSTT) and the statu­to­ry cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC). "We are al­so sur­prised to note the move by statu­to­ry cor­po­ra­tions, State en­ter­pris­es, in this case, PTSC and TSTT, and the move to de­cer­ti­fy the two recog­nised bar­gain­ing units," Browne had said. Speak­ing with re­porters on Fri­day at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's sem­i­nar on cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, Browne ex­plained the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to halt the de­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process by say­ing the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to look at the big­ger pic­ture. "Our po­si­tion is not with re­gard to any events tak­ing place at the mi­cro lev­el. Ours is a po­si­tion at a macro lev­el with re­gard to Gov­ern­ment's in­volve­ment and the rule of labour, busi­ness and Gov­ern­ment. De­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is too ex­treme a step for us," Browne said.

Re­fer­ring to ac­tion tak­en by the ac­tion by em­ploy­ees of TSTT and PTSC, Browne said it was up to those en­ti­ties to take the rel­e­vant ac­tion. "The com­pa­nies have to take ac­tion against em­ploy­ees who break rules. That is for com­pa­nies to do. That is not for us (Gov­ern­ment) to get in­volved with. There's a con­cil­i­a­tion mech­a­nism, there's an in­dus­tri­al court and those are rules which have to be fol­lowed," Browne said.

? Em­ploy­ees' ac­tions

?On Ju­ly 7, of­fi­cials of the CWU and TSTT em­ploy­ees at­tempt­ed to de­liv­er a pe­ti­ti­tion to TSTT ex­ec­u­tive at TSTT House, Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain.

PTSC stat­ed that on Sep­tem­ber 14, of­fi­cers of the TI­WU and some work­ers of the PTSC took the keys of some PTSC bus­es and drove them in­to po­si­tions on the PTSC com­pound which pre­vent­ed the move­ment of ve­hi­cles out of the com­pound.

? TSTT re­sponds:

Re­spond­ing to Browne's state­ment that the line min­is­ter for TSTT was not in­formed, William Pow­ell, chief mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer, TSTT, apol­o­gised for the over­sight of not in­form­ing Ab­dul-Hamid about the ac­tion the com­pa­ny took. "We have dozens of le­gal mat­ters that we deal with on a dai­ly ba­sis. TSTT op­er­ates in­de­pen­dent­ly. We don't con­sult with the min­is­ter on every op­er­a­tional de­ci­sion. If it was an over­sight, we apol­o­gise. The in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence has been with­drawn. We don't nec­es­sar­i­ly con­sult with min­is­ter. If that was the case, then we apol­o­gise," Pow­ell said.