In the midst of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the Gov­ern­ment's abrupt dis­missal of hun­dreds of Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­trac­tors, af­fect­ing over 10,000 work­ers, a par­tic­u­lar­ly shock­ing com­ment emerged from the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for La Brea, Clyde El­der, a for­mer union leader and now a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

In de­fence of the Gov­ern­ment he cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents, El­der de­scribed the thou­sands of dis­missed work­ers as "col­lat­er­al dam­age" in the ad­min­is­tra­tion's at­tempt to rec­ti­fy what they per­ceive as a wrong­do­ing by the for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment.

The say­ing, 'when ele­phants fight, the grass gets tram­pled,' is high­ly ap­plic­a­ble in this case.

We do not ad­vo­cate for the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment; in fact, we com­mend the new ad­min­is­tra­tion for pur­su­ing any in­stances of mis­man­age­ment or mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion by the PNM and at­tempt­ing to re­form CEPEP.

If this en­tails tak­ing ac­tion against what the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment per­ceives as im­prop­er con­trac­tor hir­ing at CEPEP, then it not on­ly has the au­thor­i­ty to pro­ceed but should do so with dis­patch.

The prob­lem lies in the fact that the ex­e­cu­tion of this plan did not seem well thought out, with some last-minute de­ci­sions now be­ing tak­en to al­le­vi­ate some of the woes high­light­ed by work­ers on Mon­day, af­ter it hit home they were now un­em­ployed.

While the pub­lic was en­gaged with the Gov­ern­ment's ad­vo­ca­cy for a bill in par­lia­ment to ad­dress the ex­trav­a­gant life­time pen­sion that for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young would have re­ceived af­ter serv­ing on­ly six weeks in of­fice last Fri­day, con­trac­tors were be­ing sum­moned to CEPEP's Ste Madeleine head­quar­ters to re­ceive their dis­missal let­ters.

It ap­peared that no thought was giv­en to the fact that this ac­tion was jeop­ar­dis­ing the liveli­hoods thou­sands of in­no­cent work­ers who had no in­volve­ment in any of the wrong­ful ac­tiv­i­ties the for­mer regime is ac­cused of. In fact, the work­ers were mere­ly ful­fill­ing the tasks they were hired to do in or­der to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies.

Rather than im­ple­ment­ing a well-struc­tured and strate­gic plan that would have di­rect­ly ad­dressed the con­trac­tors' is­sues while pro­tect­ing those be­neath them, how­ev­er, there has been a hap­haz­ard ap­proach that ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed some of the na­tion's low­est in­come earn­ers.

As an in­di­vid­ual who has de­vot­ed much of his pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer to ad­vo­cat­ing for work­ers' rights, it is, there­fore, dis­heart­en­ing to see how swift­ly Min­is­ter El­der has made a com­plete 360-de­gree shift, demon­strat­ing a stark lack of com­pas­sion for those bear­ing the brunt of his Gov­ern­ment's in­ad­e­quate man­age­ment of this sit­u­a­tion.

Al­though we an­tic­i­pate that the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion will sup­port Gov­ern­ment in this ini­tia­tive, giv­en its cur­rent align­ment with the ad­min­is­tra­tion, the si­lence from oth­er trade unions re­gard­ing this is­sue con­veys a pow­er­ful mes­sage to work­ers about what they can ex­pect from the labour sec­tor go­ing for­ward.

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette stands apart in this re­gard, as the on­ly union leader call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to ur­gent­ly ad­dress this is­sue for the ben­e­fit of those gen­uine in­di­vid­u­als with se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic con­cerns, the ones whom Min­is­ter El­der has al­ready sum­mar­i­ly dis­missed as in­signif­i­cant in the cur­rent ex­er­cise.

Min­is­ter El­der needs to re­call the cam­paign slo­gan of his own Gov­ern­ment, which as­sert­ed that 'when the UNC wins, every­body wins,' and ask him­self if the CEPEP con­trac­tors and work­ers would find truth in that as­ser­tion.