Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union (AWU) Michael Pren­tice has met with Di­rec­tor of Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co­op­er­a­tive Stud­ies (CCLCS) Dr. An­dre Hen­ry and his staff along with the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion An­nette Seaforth, to en­gage in dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing the award of schol­ar­ships for aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing for its mem­ber­ship.

The meet­ing took place on Sep­tem­ber 14 at the CCLCS and fol­lowed the sign­ing of the col­lec­tive agree­ment be­tween the union and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Daryl Din­di­al on Au­gust 29.

A state­ment from the union said as a re­sult of dis­cus­sions, par­ties iden­ti­fied the in­tro­duc­tion of train­ing pro­grammes for work­ers of the bar­gain­ing unit.

The pro­grammes will be avail­able to hourly, dai­ly and week­ly rat­ed work­ers of the Port- of- Spain Cor­po­ra­tion from Oc­to­ber 1, 2022 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2026.

At the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co­op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, train­ing will run for one year in

Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment, Labour Stud­ies, In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions,

Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Man­age­ment, Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health, En­vi­ron­men­tal

Man­age­ment, Emer­gency Man­age­ment, and Project Man­age­ment.

The state­ment said, "More­over, a max­i­mum of 12 work­ers are to be se­lect­ed by man­age­ment and the union on an an­nu­al ba­sis. The Port- of- Spain Cor­po­ra­tion will be re­spon­si­ble for the full cost of the train­ing in­clu­sive of reg­is­tra­tion fees. "

It said this train­ing for mem­bers of the union was a di­rect out­come of the signed agree­ment with the CPO as the union un­der­stands that the work of trade unions has sig­nif­i­cant­ly ad­vanced, there­fore the skill set re­quired to be ef­fec­tive in this cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment re­quires for­mal up- skilling and ed­u­ca­tion, a goal the AWU is ful­ly com­mit­ted to.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the union will be seek­ing meet­ings in the fore­see­able fu­ture with the MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, where a max­i­mum of six work­ers are to be se­lect­ed col­lec­tive­ly by MIC and AWU on an an­nu­al ba­sis for tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing.

The pro­grammes will con­tribute to build­ing the knowl­edge and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of mem­bers and en­able the Port- of- Spain Cor­po­ra­tion to im­prove on its de­liv­ery of ser­vices to its burgess­es, the state­ment said.