Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union (AWU), Michael Pren­tice, says he is look­ing for­ward to up­com­ing dis­cus­sions with Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al as ne­go­ti­a­tions over out­stand­ing wage agree­ments con­tin­ue.

Pren­tice’s com­ments yes­ter­day come a day af­ter Dr Din­di­al con­firmed that a pro­posed wage set­tle­ment val­ued at $2.6 bil­lion was sub­mit­ted to the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW). The pro­pos­al, which spans a 12-year pe­ri­od, com­bines cash and non-cash ben­e­fits in an ef­fort to ease the State’s fis­cal bur­den. Ac­cord­ing to Din­di­al, the of­fer car­ries a re­cur­rent an­nu­al cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $250 mil­lion, with fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and pay­ment flex­i­bil­i­ty cen­tral to the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Pren­tice said the AWU re­mains fo­cused on im­ple­ment­ing agree­ments al­ready con­clud­ed.

“At this time, we have signed off on the April 2022 agree­ment, and that is where we are at this mo­ment re­gard­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tion of 2022 and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of what we have signed,” Pren­tice said.

He not­ed that while there have been no fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the CPO to date, a meet­ing is ex­pect­ed soon.

“We have had no fur­ther dis­cus­sions as yet with the CPO. We ex­pect to have a meet­ing com­ing up short­ly be­cause we wrote to the CPO, and they gave a com­mit­ment for the month of Jan­u­ary. We are wait­ing for that meet­ing to con­clude that part of the ne­go­ti­a­tions. The per­cent­age for 2022 is five per cent plus mar­ket rate,” he ex­plained.

Pren­tice added that fu­ture talks would al­so ad­dress pre­vi­ous­ly signed agree­ments.

“When we have the meet­ing with the CPO, we will then raise the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­vis­it­ing agree­ments signed be­tween 2014 and 2019,” he said.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU), Michael An­nisette, said he con­tin­ues to pur­sue dock­work­ers’ is­sues dili­gent­ly, em­pha­siz­ing that these ne­go­ti­a­tions dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly from those in­volv­ing pub­lic ser­vice em­ploy­ees.

“The dock­work­ers’ mat­ter is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from that of the pub­lic ser­vices, and there­fore the ap­proach is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent,” An­nisette said. He stressed that strate­gic en­gage­ment, rather than pub­lic con­fronta­tion, re­mains key.

“There are strate­gic ways to deal with our mat­ters. It’s not about mak­ing noise. The con­ver­sa­tions I am hav­ing are en­cour­ag­ing,” he added.

An­nisette, who al­so serves as Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), which ne­go­ti­at­ed on be­half of the NUGFW, ac­knowl­edged that dock­work­ers have been close­ly fol­low­ing re­cent de­vel­op­ments.

“I’m get­ting licks and a ham­mer over my head from dock­work­ers. They’re say­ing, ‘I see you in NUGFW and this one and that one, what about the port?’” he said.

He al­so ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led gov­ern­ment for its ap­proach to labour re­la­tions.

“I want to again thank the Kam­la-led pro­gres­sive gov­ern­ment for un­der­stand­ing the cir­cum­stances, which are to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from those of pub­lic ser­vants re­gard­ing our out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions,” An­nisette said.

The SWW­TU has tra­di­tion­al­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed di­rect­ly with the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT), rather than through the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.