Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) is ex­press­ing deep dis­ap­point­ment and frus­tra­tion af­ter MTS es­tate po­lice of­fi­cers, who were an­tic­i­pat­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions start­ing at ten per cent as promised in the Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed “work­ers’ agen­da”, were in­stead pre­sent­ed with a two per cent of­fer for the 2016–2019 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said they are be­ing pun­ished for re­fus­ing to sign on to the coali­tion of in­ter­est, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of sidelin­ing its mem­bers de­spite re­peat­ed­ly promis­ing that wage ne­go­ti­a­tions would be­gin at ten per cent for state sec­tor work­ers.

EPA pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son said the pro­pos­al not on­ly con­tra­dict­ed pub­lic com­mit­ments made by se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials but al­so sent a clear mes­sage that MTS of­fi­cers were be­ing treat­ed as “less than” com­pared to oth­er state-sec­tor work­ers.

Richard­son said of­fi­cers were now pay­ing the price for a mis­un­der­stand­ing and a let­ter that was nev­er sent, claim­ing the State was us­ing out­dat­ed cor­re­spon­dence to force a two per cent wage set­tle­ment the as­so­ci­a­tion nev­er signed off on.

Richard­son, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, said the con­fu­sion be­gan af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with of­fi­cers in 2024.

“In 2024, we con­sult­ed with the of­fi­cers and they in­di­cat­ed that the EPA had to ac­cept the two per cent, be­cause that is all the PNM had on the ta­ble at the time,” he ex­plained.

“They told us, take the two per cent, look for the next two, and take the next five the PNM was of­fer­ing.”

A let­ter re­flect­ing that po­si­tion was draft­ed in No­vem­ber, but ac­cord­ing to Richard­son, the as­so­ci­a­tion ver­bal­ly told the au­thor­i­ties in Jan­u­ary that it in­tend­ed to re-con­sult with of­fi­cers and sub­mit fresh pro­pos­als.

The prob­lem, he said, is that the of­fi­cial fol­low-up let­ter meant to clar­i­fy the EPA’s new po­si­tion nev­er made it out.

“We told them ver­bal­ly, but the let­ter was sup­posed to go af­ter,” Richard­son ad­mit­ted. “It stayed in the Drop­box and didn’t go.”

De­spite this, Richard­son said ne­go­tia­tors had cho­sen to re­ly on a De­cem­ber 2024 let­ter as the as­so­ci­a­tion’s fi­nal po­si­tion.

“They took the last let­ter in De­cem­ber and ran with it,” he said. “They nev­er came back to us to ac­tu­al­ly sign off on the two per cent they of­fered.”

He stressed that the EPA had in­formed the au­thor­i­ties that it was prepar­ing fresh pro­pos­als.

“We met with them and told them we have new pro­pos­als to sub­mit,” Richard­son not­ed. “But now they want to use an old let­ter and act as though we ac­cept­ed some­thing we nev­er of­fi­cial­ly agreed to.”

The EPA pres­i­dent be­lieves the push­back the as­so­ci­a­tion was now fac­ing is de­lib­er­ate.

“Gov­ern­ment said the work­ers’ agen­da is now pol­i­cy. They said ne­go­ti­a­tions will start at ten per cent, those were their words,” Richard­son stat­ed.

“Yet MTS of­fi­cers, who are among the low­est paid in the State sec­tor, are be­ing of­fered two per cent, and that is some six­ty-some­thing cents.”

Richard­son not­ed that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had of­fered two per cent for 2013–2016, which the as­so­ci­a­tion re­ject­ed. How­ev­er, no for­mal of­fer was ever made for 2016–2019 un­til now.

He said of­fi­cers were an­tic­i­pat­ing a fair and pro­por­tion­al start­ing point in line with com­mit­ments set out in the Gov­ern­ment’s man­i­festo and re­peat­ed by cab­i­net min­is­ters, but in­stead re­ceived what he de­scribed as “a slap in the face.”

“This is a be­tray­al of the very work­ers’ agen­da they told us to trust,” he said.

“Every oth­er sec­tor is hear­ing ten per cent as the base­line. MTS is be­ing of­fered crumbs.”

With more than 2,000 work­ers in the bar­gain­ing unit, Richard­son ques­tioned why MTS is be­ing iso­lat­ed from the rest of the state sec­tor.

“If es­tate po­lice aren’t pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, then who is?” he asked. “How could the work­ers’ agen­da ap­ply to every­one ex­cept us?”

The EPA has re­ject­ed the of­fer out­right and will en­gage its mem­ber­ship af­ter re­ceiv­ing the of­fi­cial doc­u­ments.

“This of­fer shows the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tions to­ward the EPA. We are tak­ing note, and we will re-eval­u­ate how we op­er­ate go­ing for­ward,” Richard­son said.

He added that of­fi­cers are dev­as­tat­ed and “phys­i­cal­ly sick” over what they see as bro­ken promis­es and de­lib­er­ate sidelin­ing.