KE­JAN HAYNES

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment is stand­ing firm in its de­ci­sion not to re­join the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil.

Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie pre­vi­ous­ly urged the unions to re­turn to the tri­par­tite body. How­ev­er, JTUM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette yes­ter­day said un­less re­al changes are made, the union will not change its mind.

“Un­til and un­less there’s a gen­uine at­tempt by this Gov­ern­ment to gen­uine­ly en­gage the labour move­ment in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions, we are not go­ing back there. We won’t be used as a PR stunt, right by this gov­ern­ment,” An­nisette said.

He said NTAC must be leg­is­lat­ed.

“That means the Gov­ern­ment can­not ma­nip­u­late it as they see fit, when an­oth­er gov­ern­ment comes out, they do some­thing dif­fer­ent, and we have those leg­is­la­tions in Grena­da and oth­er coun­tries,” An­nisette said.

He called on the Labour Min­is­ter to ex­plain why the Gov­ern­ment re­moved labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives from State boards, ex­cept those in which the law says a labour rep­re­sen­ta­tive must be ap­point­ed.

An­nisette al­so called for leg­is­la­tion which will pre­vent com­pa­nies from sim­ply shut­ting down, leav­ing work­ers with­out ben­e­fits.

“Do you know if a com­pa­ny closed down ful­ly and is not op­er­a­tional, you are not en­ti­tled to any ben­e­fits?” An­nisette not­ed.

“That’s a re­al­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go in the 21st cen­tu­ry. And no mat­ter how we tried to put that on the ta­ble, do you know the Petrotrin is­sue we would have asked to raise that at that body? And the Prime Min­is­ter said no!”

An­nisette said the Gov­ern­ment should take a page from Mia Mot­t­ley in Bar­ba­dos who, on Thurs­day, took steps to deal with the high cost of liv­ing on the is­land. Mot­t­ley re­duced VAT on elec­tric­i­ty bills and in­clud­ed more foods on the list of VAT-free items.

“The ques­tion is why it is this Gov­ern­ment can­not do that, or why it is that this Gov­ern­ment is so ar­ro­gant, that they do not even want to en­gage the trade union move­ment in those kinds of dis­cus­sions that is nec­es­sary, as has been done by the chair­man of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly,” An­nisette said.

An­nisette was speak­ing to the me­dia in To­ba­go, af­ter de­liv­er­ing the union’s mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence in Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary.

JTUM has so far has de­liv­ered copies of the Labour Day mo­tion to the Pres­i­dent, Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, Speak­er of the House and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.

JTUM pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get thanked Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for meet­ing with them.

“The Chief Sec­re­tary seemed to be seized with a good un­der­stand­ing of all of the is­sues, but not just un­der­stand­ing, but where we should go from here go­ing for­ward,” he said.

“There­fore, we com­mit­ted to have more mean­ing­ful and deep­er dis­cus­sions and so on, aimed at im­prov­ing the lives of To­bag­o­ni­ans and Trinida­di­ans.”

He al­so promised to bring mo­tor­cades to To­ba­go but de­clined to give a date.