Ali­cia Llanos

Em­ploy­ees at both the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court and the Hall of Jus­tice walked off their jobs yes­ter­day, claim­ing vic­tim­i­sa­tion for com­ply­ing with union or­ders. The work­ers as­sem­bled out­side the Hall of Jus­tice and met with Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) act­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary Nixon Cal­len­der. Em­ploy­ees claimed they were threat­ened by se­nior of­fi­cials for fol­low­ing the PSA's or­ders not to work more than 4.8 min­utes a day.

A clerk at the mag­is­trates' court said em­ploy­ees were fol­low­ing the or­ders of the PSA and not work­ing for more than 4.8 min­utes. That em­ploy­ee claimed the work­ers were threat­ened by a se­nior court of­fi­cial.

The em­ploy­ee said the court of­fi­cial told them told them if work­ers did not re­sume work, she (the of­fi­cial) would take their names and have them re­port­ed to the Gov­ern­ment's Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO). The em­ploy­ee said they then called the PSA. Union of­fi­cials ar­rived at the Hall of Jus­tice and called all em­ploy­ees out of work.

Speak­ing out­side of the Hall of Jus­tice, Cal­len­der said: "Let them know, if they threat­en one, they threat­en us all. "The ju­di­cial sys­tem will come to a halt!" he added.

Short­ly af­ter staff and PSA mem­bers mount­ed the protest, po­lice of­fi­cers ar­rived and asked them to move. Cal­len­der led the crowd to Wood­ford Square, where he told the em­ploy­ees they could on­ly be vic­timised if they stood alone. On Tues­day, PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke told work­ers to work for on­ly 4.8 min­utes a day to protest the CPO's one per cent wage in­crease pro­pos­al. He al­so in­struct­ed work­ers to at­tend work this week and do noth­ing, un­til the CPO made a high­er wage pro­pos­al.

Ju­di­cia­ry re­sponds

In an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion to the protest yes­ter­day, the ju­di­cia­ry's pro­to­col of­fi­cer Jones P Madeira said there was no truth to vic­tim­i­sa­tion claims. He said the work­ers were dis­re­spect­ful and abu­sive to Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ayres-Cae­sar. "The ju­di­cia­ry has al­ways com­plied with the re­quest of unions when­ev­er it need­ed to meet with mem­bers of staff," he said. "There is a pro­to­col in­volved that is they (the work­ers) ap­ply to hold a meet­ing in the build­ing. That was not done, but sud­den­ly just af­ter lunch a meet­ing was con­vened in the reg­istry of the mag­is­trates' court. "As such, it (the meet­ing) was ques­tioned in the con­text of the se­cu­ri­ty of the court at which time of­fi­cials of the union dis­played dis­re­spect to the chief mag­is­trate, the se­nior mag­is­trate and oth­er court of­fi­cials." Madeira said at no point was any threat made to any mem­ber of staff protest­ing, or oth­er­wise.