Trade unions across the coun­try are ex­pec­tant and ea­ger­ly await­ing a re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble with the new­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment.

The suc­cess­ful cam­paign of the Coali­tion of In­ter­ests spear­head­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) fea­tured many promis­es. How­ev­er, work­ers in par­tic­u­lar would have been in­ter­est­ed in the as­ser­tion made that ne­go­ti­a­tions for out­stand­ing wage set­tle­ments would be­gin at a 10 per cent in­crease.

This promise was reaf­firmed by pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union An­cel Ro­get just last week, as he stat­ed, “T&TEC work­ers… your ne­go­ti­a­tion is go­ing to start at 10 per cent; Postal work­ers – job eval­u­a­tion; NIB work­ers – im­ple­men­ta­tion of the nine per cent; Port work­ers – 12 per cent. All of those things were agreed up­on al­ready.

Now that the vic­to­ry has been se­cured, the unions are now look­ing for the fol­low-through.

Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette is one union leader who is con­fi­dent that the en­hanced salary promise for work­ers in the pub­lic sec­tor would be kept.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view on Tues­day, “There were pre-dis­cus­sions and there were com­mit­ments that were made in terms of reg­u­lar­is­ing the Port’s 12 per cent which the PNM gov­ern­ment un­der Dr Kei­th Christo­pher Row­ley re­fused to im­ple­ment for dock work­ers. And as I told him that he picked a fight with Sea­men’s union and dock work­ers, and he will live to re­gret it. The re­sults of Mon­day’s elec­tion proved what I was say­ing right through the length and breadth of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Hav­ing said that there, there is a com­mit­ment, and there was a com­mit­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter-elect and, and we be­lieve in the com­mit­ment be­cause she has proven to be a woman of her word. And we want to, and I wish to re­mind peo­ple that un­der the UNC regime, we were able to set­tle al­most 80 some­thing or 100 and some­thing out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions that were left up in the air by the PNM. And I an­tic­i­pate that this time around, there would not be any dif­fer­ence.”

An­nisette took note that many econ­o­mists and PNM of­fi­cials had raised ques­tions as to where the mon­ey would be found to fi­nance such in­creas­es. He how­ev­er point­ed out that sev­er­al pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies had man­aged to fi­nance such salary in­creas­es in the sim­i­lar eco­nom­ic cli­mate and as such felt the re­strained of­fers by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment could have been im­proved.

“While I am hear­ing those arm­chair econ­o­mists talk­ing about we wouldn’t have the mon­ey and how much it will cost the Trea­sury, my view on the mat­ter is that the PNM gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ty was not work­ers. They didn’t see work­ers’ wages as a pri­or­i­ty,” said An­nisette.

The vet­er­an trade union­ist said the ques­tion that needs to be asked is why it is in cir­cum­stances where gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties, based on the fi­nances, could have met the salary in­creas­es they ne­go­ti­at­ed on be­half of their work­ers, that the gov­ern­ment re­fused to im­ple­ment those agree­ment and sign agree­ments.

“That is an in­ter­fer­ence in in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and an in­ter­fer­ence in col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing,” said An­nisette.

Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas al­so con­firmed she was look­ing for­ward to start­ing the wage dis­cus­sions when the gov­ern­ment is of­fi­cial­ly in­stalled.

“The next step is to al­low the gov­ern­ment to take of­fice. I ex­pect ne­go­ti­a­tions to be con­duct­ed in the same man­ner that ne­go­ti­a­tions have al­ways been con­duct­ed. That is, we meet around the ta­ble and we en­gage in our dis­cus­sions.

“A re­minder that when it comes to the set­tle­ment of ne­go­ti­a­tions, in par­tic­u­lar, the po­si­tion of the UNC is a start­ing point of no less than 10 per cent and we start from there, and we will see how the ne­go­ti­a­tions go,” said Thomas who, like Ro­get, took to the UNC plat­form dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign to con­firm that this was promised to work­ers.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joanne Ogeer said the union is now wait­ing to see if the UNC would hold to their word, de­spite hav­ing some ap­pre­hen­sion about some of the promis­es.

“The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union has main­tained and con­tin­ues to main­tain its in­de­pen­dence, and we are now look­ing for­ward to see­ing based on the UNC slo­gan, ‘when UNC wins, every­body wins,’ how their promis­es will now be re­alised.

“What I must say is we have been look­ing at some of the promis­es, or the gifts or treat that were promised dur­ing the cam­paign to be one of, for in­stance, no prop­er­ty tax, is­sues with pen­sion, a very tick­lish po­si­tion for the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union, be­cause we have out­stand­ing pen­sion is­sues as well as this 10 per cent,” she said.

Let me say, cap­ping and when I say cap­ping, I mean start­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions at 10 per cent, we are look­ing at it to be a very un­re­al­is­tic fig­ure, to be truth­ful. So if they have said, and they would have enun­ci­at­ed through­out the cam­paign, that ne­go­ti­a­tions will start at 10 per cent, we are anx­ious to look and see what they have promised to ac­tu­al­ly be re­alised.”

Ogeer said the union how­ev­er would push to en­sure the new gov­ern­ment can keep its word.

“That’s where we sit now, to be at a seat of ac­count­abil­i­ty, and we have al­ways main­tained that. So ei­ther par­ty, whether it was the PNM who would have been vic­to­ri­ous or the UNC, which has emerged vic­to­ri­ous, we are here now to keep them to ac­count to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly the work­ing class, to en­sure that the promis­es that they would have ar­tic­u­lat­ed are re­alised.”

Ogeer al­so said the union was in­ter­est­ed to see who would be the new Min­is­ters of Labour and Pub­lic Util­i­ties re­spec­tive­ly.

She said, “The CWU will im­me­di­ate­ly again be re­quest­ing re­ports which have been shroud­ed in se­cre­cy which are the fit-for-pur­pose, the cy­ber-at­tack re­port in­to TSTT and the foren­sic au­dit in­to TSTT. The next six months to a year will be an in­ter­est­ing time for the UNC.”

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to the OW­TU to get fur­ther clar­i­ty on the way for­ward for ne­go­ti­a­tions, but did not get a re­sponse up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.

For­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne al­so ex­plained that the in­com­ing gov­ern­ment would still have to large­ly base its cam­paign promis­es on the last bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

He said this would like­ly guide the gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to sat­is­fy­ing these ne­go­ti­a­tions un­til the new gov­ern­ment can present its own bud­get state­ment for the 2026 fis­cal year.