As the re­cent de­bate over whether the Pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, Wat­son Duke, should re­sign from his sub­stan­tive role at WASA showed, it seems that, at least for labour lead­ers, they can have their cake and eat it.

Mr Duke has been on un­paid leave from WASA for about 11 years in or­der to be the PSA’s pres­i­dent. Since then, he al­so en­tered the world of par­ty pol­i­tics, be­ing elect­ed a mem­ber of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and be­com­ing mi­nor­i­ty leader.

Be­ing a se­nior labour leader and politi­cian whilst keep­ing his WASA job–even if on un­paid leave–may well be legal­ly ac­cept­able. How­ev­er, there is a big­ger ques­tion to be asked about whether that is moral­ly ac­cept­able.

The pol­i­tics first.

If it is al­ready wor­ry­ing that Mr Duke seems to see no prob­lem in be­ing, at the same time, the pres­i­dent of a ma­jor union rep­re­sent­ing state em­ploy­ees whilst be­ing a law­mak­er for state mat­ters re­lat­ed to To­ba­go, things can get even more com­pli­cat­ed when WASA is thrown in­to the mix.

For in­stance, if he us­es his po­lit­i­cal plat­form as the THA’s mi­nor­i­ty leader to de­fend WASA or dri­ve poli­cies that may ben­e­fit the agency or its work­ers in To­ba­go, will he be speak­ing on be­half of his con­stituents and lo­cal tax­pay­ers as a WASA em­ploy­ee or as the PSA pres­i­dent?

With­out a clear sep­a­ra­tion of in­ter­ests, when Mr Duke fe­ro­cious­ly cam­paign against re­forms at WASA de­spite the fact that the au­thor­i­ty is leak­ing both wa­ter and mon­ey at a fright­en­ing rate, is he speak­ing as the PSA Pres­i­dent or Mr Duke the em­ploy­ee who wants to cling on to his job, even if un­paid? Or as the THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader who, by de­fend­ing the sta­tus quo, seems to be fine with WASA’s poor ser­vice and fi­nan­cial bur­den to his own con­stituents?

The prin­ci­ple of un­paid leave for those elect­ed to union lead­er­ship roles is po­ten­tial­ly fair, de­signed to al­low em­ploy­ees to rep­re­sent their col­leagues with­out the risk of be­com­ing job­less if they de­cide to serve for a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od of time (a healthy prac­tice that most of our union lead­ers ig­nore).

But this be­comes un­sus­tain­able when union lead­ers stay in pow­er for years, if not decades, whilst still re­tain­ing their sub­stan­tive roles, just in case they may have to go back one day. And it will al­ways pose po­ten­tial­ly ma­jor con­flicts of in­ter­est when they find them­selves ne­go­ti­at­ing re­struc­tur­ing or re­trench­ment pro­pos­als that may im­pact on their orig­i­nal de­part­ments or roles.

Then there is the ques­tion whether it is moral­ly ac­cept­able for union lead­ers to re­main as state em­ploy­ees–di­rect­ly or through state en­ter­pris­es–for years and years, ac­cru­ing rights and priv­i­leges in the process, even if on un­paid leave.

There is al­so a prac­ti­cal point here.

Most work­ing peo­ple know all too well that if away from a role for sev­er­al years, on sec­ond­ment or un­paid leave, it is re­al­ly hard to go back to that role as we all move on, per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

It is sim­ply un­re­al­is­tic for some­one run­ning a high-pro­file union for over a decade to go back to his or her desk when the time in of­fice is over. And, in Mr Duke’s case, it would be even hard­er to see how he could dis­charge his du­ties as a THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader and politi­cian whilst work­ing full time be­hind a WASA of­fice desk.

His po­si­tion is al­so con­tra­dic­to­ry when it comes to the labour move­ment’s de­fault po­si­tion on em­ploy­ment.

Giv­en his right to come back to his sub­stan­tive job at WASA should he re­sign from his PSA role, WASA man­agers can­not give a con­tin­u­ing con­tract to those cov­er­ing for him. If WASA is do­ing its job cor­rect­ly–and this is a big ‘if’–they have to keep fill­ing Mr Duke’s post with fixed-term con­tracts just to make sure he can claim it back if or when he wants.

This messy state of af­fairs can al­so be very lu­cra­tive for Mr Duke. Af­ter all, if WASA is closed down or goes through a ma­jor re­trench­ment process af­fect­ing his sub­stan­tive role, Mr Duke will ben­e­fit from a sev­er­ance pay­ment which will take in­to ac­count all his time as its em­ploy­ee–paid or not–since the un­paid leave pe­ri­od con­tin­ues to at­tract ben­e­fits oth­er staff re­ceive.

This is what hap­pened to the Pres­i­dent of the OW­TU, An­cel Ro­get Jr, who was en­ti­tled to Petrotrin’s gen­er­ous sev­er­ance pack­age at the time of its clo­sure, de­spite the fact that he hadn’t ac­tu­al­ly worked there for years.

Of­ten union lead­ers in this coun­try like to place them­selves as one of the or­di­nary men and women of the land, fac­ing the chal­lenges of the low paid. That may even be the case for some, but many seem to be any­thing but or­di­nary cit­i­zens when it comes to their pay, their terms and their perks.

Who else can move from one job to an­oth­er, as they draw wages and ac­crue em­ploy­ment and pen­sion rights as trade union lead­ers, and still be en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion should the orig­i­nal em­ploy­er re­struc­ture or close down?

Why the Pres­i­dent of the OW­TU, Mr An­cel Ro­get Jr, should have re­ceived sev­er­ance pay from Petrotrin, just like Mr Duke would be en­ti­tled to re­ceive from WASA, giv­en that he hadn’t worked there for years?

What makes them so spe­cial that they can cling on to their orig­i­nal jobs and even ben­e­fit from sev­er­ance pack­ages re­flect­ing both worked and non-worked years, even if they are un­der no im­me­di­ate threat of los­ing their main source of in­come?

And how can they face their mem­bers with­out at least a sense of con­tri­tion giv­en how priv­i­leged they are?

Our trade union lead­ers are sure­ly hav­ing the cake and eat­ing it.

Too bad that of­ten the cake’s main in­gre­di­ents are ex­cep­tion­al­ism, tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and the coun­try’s fu­ture.