Trade union mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to march through Port-of-Spain to­day in protest against what they say is Gov­ern­ment's re­fusal to set­tle out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. Claim­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment is in­tent on in­fring­ing work­ers' right to a free and fair col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process, mem­bers of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) are ex­pect­ed to as­sem­ble out­side the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, from 9 am to de­mand all out­stand­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions with Gov­ern­ment be set­tled soon. Among the unions ex­pect­ed to take part is the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) which has threat­ened strike ac­tion at Petrotrin over the lack of vari­able pay, un­filled va­can­cies and the is­sue of a new con­tract to Bunkers Oil Trinidad and To­ba­go. OW­TU is ex­pect­ed to be joined by the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU) whose Pub­lic Trans­porta­tion Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion's (PTSC) bus dri­vers took sick­out ac­tion over stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. Al­so ex­pect­ed to take part are the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU), whose TSTT work­ers have been in a quar­rel with the com­pa­ny with re­gard to their pen­sion plan; Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU), Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), whose pres­i­dent gen­er­al is Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor James Lam­bert, and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA).

Al­so on the agen­da are the pri­vati­sa­tion of state com­pa­nies, ex­ploita­tion and vic­tim­i­sa­tion of work­ers and abuse of pow­er in the work­place. Gen­er­al sec­re­tary of JTUM, Ozzie War­wick, said the move­ment would not mit­i­gate un­til out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for all unions were set­tled. He said work­ers' prob­lems had be­come so crit­i­cal that all unions came on board. From the Fi­nan­cial Com­plex union­ists would pro­ceed up Hen­ry Street, across Gor­don Street, up Char­lotte Street and around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah and Memo­r­i­al Park. The pro­ces­sion would then go to In­de­pen­dence Square and Wright­son Road. The work­ers would then re­turn to the com­plex, where var­i­ous trade union lead­ers would ad­dress them. War­wick said at that meet­ing, an­nounce­ments would be made on how JTUM planned to deal with the non-set­tle­ment of ne­go­ti­a­tions. He said it was im­por­tant for trade unions to con­tin­ue their strug­gle as it al­ready had made sig­nif­i­cant in­roads against Gov­ern­ment's ne­glect of the work­ing class.