The coun­try’s three trade union fed­er­a­tions, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOS (FI­TUN) have ac­cused Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert of be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble and try­ing to de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion by blam­ing a de­ci­sion of the in­dus­tri­al court for NP mov­ing from a break-even po­si­tion to a loss.

The re­lease not­ed that on Jan­u­ary 26, 2021, Im­bert told the Par­lia­ment that the In­dus­tri­al Court award­ed an in­crease to work­ers at Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um in a range of ten to 11 per cent salary in­crease. As a re­sult of that award by the In­dus­tri­al Court, Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um is now run­ning at a loss every month in the vicin­i­ty of $15 to $20 mil­lion.

The state­ment said Im­bert was fac­tu­al­ly in­ac­cu­rate about the award of the court as it im­plies that the court’s de­ci­sion has re­sult­ed in NP run­ning at a loss.

“Which fac­tu­al­ly not true. The Min­is­ter’s words al­so im­plies that the court is re­spon­si­ble for the fi­nan­cial state of NP. This is a very ir­re­spon­si­ble and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing state­ment. The fact is the In­dus­tri­al Court nev­er award­ed an in­crease of salary of ten to 11 per cent,” the union said.

The Sun­day Guardian had shown that Im­bert’s as­ser­tion was fac­tu­al­ly in­cor­rect and the Min­is­ter wrong in ac­cus­ing the court of caus­ing NP’s chal­lenge. Im­bert then launched an at­tack on the Sun­day Guardian say­ing none of the as­ser­tions in the news­pa­per re­port were ac­cu­rate.

The Trade Union move­ment rub­bished Im­bert’s sug­ges­tions.

They said: “The trade unions are of the view that the Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle is cor­rect and that it is the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance who is at­tempt­ing to cir­cum­vent the free and fair Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing process by stretch­ing the truth and dis­tort­ing the facts.”

They not­ed that an NP wit­ness, as stat­ed in the judg­ment, said that he was com­fort­able with the award of a sin­gle dig­it in­crease any­where from ze­ro to nine per cent.

The OW­TU re­quest­ed an in­crease of 14 per cent and the court grant­ed an in­crease of sev­en per cent with re­spect to Cost-of-Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA).

“We first wish to re­mind the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance that con­sol­i­da­tion of CO­LA is in fact a ne­go­tiable item and it was NP that ap­proached the union to con­sol­i­date three ex­pired pe­ri­ods,” the state­ment said.

The unions added that it was the com­pa­ny that froze the pay­ment of CO­LA in 2011 in vi­o­la­tion of the ex­ist­ing col­lec­tive agree­ment by re­fus­ing to ad­just the CO­LA paid de­pend­ing on the changes of the Re­tail Price In­dex.

On De­cem­ber 4, 2019, the In­dus­tri­al Court or­dered the com­pa­ny to re­sume pay­ment of CO­LA in keep­ing with the ne­go­ti­at­ed pro­vi­sions of Ar­ti­cle 11 of the reg­is­tered Col­lec­tive Agree­ment.

The case was ad­journed to De­cem­ber 17, 2019 at 1 pm.

How­ev­er, be­fore the hear­ing at the court on De­cem­ber 17, NP and the union met and set­tled the mat­ter and agreed to the pay­ment of the retroac­tive CO­LA owed to work­ers ef­fec­tive 2011.

As a re­sult, par­ties filed a Terms of Set­tle­ment which su­per­seded the court or­der of De­cem­ber 4, and which made that or­der re­dun­dant and of no ef­fect.

The unions said the Min­is­ter ought to know that the fi­nal de­ci­sion on the is­sue of CO­LA was made by the par­ties in col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and not by the court.

“He ought to know that it was not an or­der of the court which made CO­LA retroac­tive but a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment be­tween the par­ties, which the par­ties signed and reg­is­tered at the court.

“We wish to re­mind the Min­is­ter that it was a de­ci­sion by NP’s man­age­ment and/or board to il­le­gal­ly stop the pay­ment of CO­LA to work­ers since 2011 which placed NP in the po­si­tion of hav­ing to pay retroac­tive CO­LA and not be­cause of the court,” the unions said.

They added that Im­bert needs to hold to ac­count who­ev­er at NP’s man­age­ment and/or board lev­el that took the il­le­gal de­ci­sion to sim­ply stop the pay­ment of CO­LA, since 2011 and stop blam­ing the court and con­tin­u­ing to mis­lead the pub­lic.

The loss at NP has noth­ing to do with the court’s de­ci­sions, the state­ment said, adding that such “an at­tack” by the ex­ec­u­tive arm of the state on a court of high­er record can un­der­mine the ju­di­cial sys­tem and the en­tire in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ar­chi­tec­ture, which has kept in­dus­tri­al peace and sta­bil­i­ty for the last 50 years.

The In­dus­tri­al Court must be al­lowed to main­tain its ob­jec­tiv­i­ty and in­de­pen­dence, which in­de­pen­dence must be pro­tect­ed in its de­ter­mi­na­tion of fair mat­ters and not at­tacked by the State, the unions said.

In ad­di­tion, they added that the fact that NP and oth­er State en­ter­pris­es and the pub­lic sec­tor on a whole have out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions go­ing as far back as 2012 is no fault of the court or the unions.

The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty falls square­ly on the State which has re­fused to keep col­lec­tive agree­ments cur­rent, which would al­low the gov­ern­ment to avoid the gross in­jus­tice of peo­ple liv­ing on 2012/2013 salaries in 2021, the state­ment added.

It said the cost of liv­ing con­tin­ues to spi­ral up­wards cre­at­ing re­al and vex­ing in­crease in the gap be­tween salaries and ris­ing cost of liv­ing.

“The Min­is­ter is again at­tempt­ing to usurp the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process.

“Col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is a cor­ner­stone of a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy. Its im­por­tance is such that it is pro­tect­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al law as en­shrined in the ILO Con­ven­tion C154 - Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing Con­ven­tion, 1981 (No. 154),” the unions said.

They added that col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing does not in­clude a Min­is­ter of Fi­nance dis­cussing terms of em­ploy­ment in the Sen­ate.

“That in­for­ma­tion should right­ly be pre­sent­ed to the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union. It is high­ly ir­reg­u­lar and wor­ri­some for the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to usurp the role of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and at­tempt to im­pose a uni­lat­er­al po­si­tion in the pub­lic do­main.

They added that this does not give the Min­is­ter the right to vi­o­late the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act and the in­ter­na­tion­al labour stan­dards and con­ven­tions that have been rat­i­fied by this coun­try.