With the amal­ga­ma­tion of In­vest TT, Ex­port TT and Cre­ative TT, Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) is un­hap­py with how the process of form­ing the T&T Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency Ltd was han­dled.

The new T&T na­tion­al pro­mo­tion agency was in­stalled less than a month ago and the new chair of the agency is Fran­ka Costel­lo, who pre­vi­ous­ly chaired In­vesTT.

BIG­WU’s labour re­la­tions/as­signed of­fi­cer at ex­porTT, Wes­ley Fran­cis, in an in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian said the union has recog­ni­tion sta­tus for Ex­porTT, which was for­mer­ly known as Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny.  

He said the union has pe­ti­tioned the Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board to amend the name on the recog­ni­tion cer­tifi­cate to re­flect “T&T Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency” but is await­ing a re­sponse.

Fran­cis said per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Trade and In­vest­ment, Ran­dall Karim, fa­cil­i­tat­ed a meet­ing on April 24, at which pre­sen­ta­tions of the new com­pa­ny’s or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture showed 110 po­si­tions.  

Fur­ther, he said the pre­sen­ta­tion de­tailed that with­in the three en­ti­ties, there are about 70 plus em­ploy­ees.

The trade union­ist said the en­tire process had to be fi­nal­ly ap­proved by the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al and the ab­sorp­tion of staff would be based on what is the “best fit” as the Min­istry of Trade could not guar­an­tee po­si­tions for all staff cur­rent­ly em­ployed, as this would be de­pen­dent on the re­cruit­ment process.

Fran­cis said on May 14, 2024, he wrote to Karim re­quest­ing a fol­low-up to the pre­vi­ous meet­ing and to be pro­vid­ed with a copy of the pro­posed or­gan­i­sa­tion chart for TT­TI­PA, along with copies of job de­scrip­tions for all pro­posed job po­si­tions.

Al­so, the union asked for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­clude the sec­ond and third col­lec­tive agree­ments for the en­ti­ty for­mer­ly known as “ex­porTT” (both are cur­rent­ly be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court). How­ev­er, from the emails sent to the Busi­ness guardian, no oth­er cor­re­spon­dence was forth­com­ing from the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary.

As a re­sult, Fran­cis said on Au­gust 15 the union wrote to the reg­is­trar of the In­dus­tri­al Court for TT­TI­PA to be de­clared the suc­ces­sor com­pa­ny to ex­porTT, in re­spect of the cer­tifi­cate of amal­ga­ma­tion of ex­porTT, In­vesTT, and Cre­ativeTT.

The union con­tends that TT­TI­PA hav­ing ac­quired all the as­sets and rights of ex­porTT Lim­it­ed, car­ries on sub­stan­tial­ly the same busi­ness in sub­stan­tial­ly the same way at the same place as ex­porTT did, em­ploy­ing the same work­ers pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed by ex­porTT.

He not­ed that the union’s plea to the In­dus­tri­al Court is to make or­ders to the ef­fect that:

• ↓TIT­PA is the suc­ces­sor to ex­porTT, as well as Cre­ativeTT and In­vesTT;

• ↓TT­TI­PA is ac­cord­ing­ly a par­ty to the col­lec­tive agree­ments;

• ↓The in­di­vid­ual con­tract en­tered in­to be­tween the af­fect­ed work­ers and ex­porTT are null and void:

 The union un­der­scored in the let­ter to the In­dus­tri­al Court that the TT­TI­PA is bound to recog­nise the union as the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union and to en­ter in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions for the pur­pose of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. The In­dus­tri­al Court is cur­rent­ly in re­cess and Fran­cis said it ex­pects a re­sponse when court re­sumes.

The labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer stressed in­for­ma­tion lat­er com­ing to the union, prompt­ed it to un­der­take a search of the Com­pa­ny’s Reg­is­ter, where it was dis­cov­ered that the amal­ga­ma­tion process was com­plet­ed on Ju­ly 16.

“The union then wrote to the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Trade, dat­ed Au­gust 6, ad­vis­ing of our dis­cov­ery and invit­ing a meet­ing. There was nev­er any ac­knowl­edge­ment nor a re­sponse.

On see­ing the Au­gust 18, Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian ar­ti­cle, en­ti­tled ‘Space for all staff at new pro­mo­tion agency,’ the trade union said it again wrote the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary by let­ter dat­ed Au­gust 20, seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion re­gard­ing the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­vest­ment’s com­ments.”

He ac­knowl­edged that Karim wrote back by say­ing “Your cor­re­spon­dence is re­ceived. We will re­vert with a re­sponse in due course.”

How­ev­er, Fran­cis high­light­ed that it came to the union’s at­ten­tion that a staff meet­ing was held on Fri­day 23 Au­gust with the staff of ex­porTT unit of TT­TI­PA.

“We have been ad­vised that you ad­dressed the staff and ex­plained the plan­ning process, and present were the board of di­rec­tors, as well as the change man­ag­er, An­tho­ny Watkins, with the chair of the board com­mit­ting to share the pro­posed or­gan­i­sa­tion chart and the pro­posed way for­ward, and com­mit­ted to host­ing a staff meet­ing in three weeks.

“In­ter­est­ing­ly, nei­ther the Min­istry of Trade nor the new­ly formed TT­TI­PA has seen fit to in­vite the union, nor to en­gage in any dis­cus­sion de­spite our nu­mer­ous items of cor­re­spon­dence. Fur­ther­more, our re­quest for in­for­ma­tion re­mains unan­swered,” the email dat­ed Au­gust 28 to Karim stat­ed.

Per­ma­nent sec­re­tary re­sponds  

When con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Karim said, “The Min­istry of Trade is not the em­ploy­er. We fa­cil­i­tat­ed dis­cus­sions with BIG­WU in the ab­sence of the board of di­rec­tors. Now that a board of di­rec­tors has been in­stalled, the union should, quite prop­er­ly, li­aise with them. The min­istry is aware that the board has reached out to BIG­WU as a let­ter was sent. Re­mem­ber the board was just of­fi­cial­ly in­stalled three weeks ago, but they in­tend to en­gage BIG­WU.”

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to the work­ers of ex­porTT on whether they were pleased with the process and felt safe in their jobs.

“The short an­swer is NO. Staff have been con­tin­u­ous­ly slight­ed through­out this en­tire process and a con­sis­tent façade has been pre­sent­ed by min­istry of­fi­cials and now, the new­ly ap­point­ed board of di­rec­tors. Imag­ine, 90 per cent of the time in­for­ma­tion is fed to the tra­di­tion­al me­dia and then man­age­ment hur­ried­ly hud­dles mem­bers of staff, to tell them ex­act­ly what they have al­ready heard through tra­di­tion­al me­dia. There have been con­sis­tent, con­cert­ed ef­forts to dis­re­spect staff and drain their morale in this process and there­fore, I don’t feel that my best in­ter­est is of high con­cern to these peo­ple,” the work­er said.

An­oth­er em­ploy­ee said, “The en­tire amal­ga­ma­tion process has been dis­or­gan­ised thus far and it se­vere­ly lacks a hu­mane touch. The amal­ga­ma­tion legal­ly came in­to ef­fect on Ju­ly 16 but staff were ad­vised on Au­gust 5. That alone should speak vol­umes. Jobs are not safe, be­cause re­gard­less of what the min­is­ter has said, a re­cruit­ment process will be rolled out and noth­ing has been for­mal­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to staff or the union about what will hap­pen for sure. So far, we have on­ly been told of pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios. So, each day we re­port to work, with­out even the cour­tesy or com­fort of at least 45 days writ­ten no­tice.”

An­oth­er com­ment­ed “I feel very un­cer­tain and don’t get a very high sense of job se­cu­ri­ty. Since the amal­ga­ma­tion, every­thing is just in lim­bo. The fact that there is a re­cruit­ment process to be fol­lowed gives even less cer­tain­ty, so I’m not cer­tain of my po­si­tion whether or not the Min­is­ter says it. Noth­ing is guar­an­teed.”

In an in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness Mag­a­zine last month Min­is­ter of Trade and In­vest­ment Paula Gopee-Scoon said the job de­scrip­tions for the new agency have been drawn up and now the chal­lenge is to find peo­ple who can fit in­to the roles that will al­low for the re­sults the min­istry is hop­ing to get.  

“It means that peo­ple, ex­ist­ing peo­ple may not fit in­to the ex­act spot where they saw them­selves. This would in­volve a tran­si­tion but there would be the op­por­tu­ni­ty for every one of them to pos­si­bly fit in­to one of the jobs with­in the struc­ture, as the Cab­i­net has ap­proved 110 for the new struc­ture,” Gopee-Scoon ex­plained.  

She not­ed some em­ploy­ees may opt not to join the new agency as they may want to go on to do oth­er things. Those em­ploy­ees will be giv­en a sep­a­ra­tion pack­age, as is cus­tom­ary in any oth­er work­space.