DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), rep­re­sent­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50,000 mem­bers across 11 unions, re­ject­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s five per cent wage in­crease pro­pos­al for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers an­nounced dur­ing Mon­day’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) head­quar­ters in Barataria yes­ter­day, JTUM pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for aban­don­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing by an­nounc­ing the five per cent of­fer for 2020 to 2022 with­out pri­or ne­go­ti­a­tions with recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty unions. He em­pha­sised that unions are ex­pect­ed to sub­mit re­search-based pro­pos­als to the chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer be­fore any coun­ter­pro­pos­al is made to ini­ti­ate col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing.

He de­scribed the fi­nance min­is­ter’s of­fer as “con­temp­tu­ous, dis­re­spect­ful, and a dis­re­gard for that process,” af­firm­ing that it would not re­ceive sup­port.

“There is no col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing; the process has gone through the door. We don’t know about any­body stand­ing in Par­lia­ment or else­where mak­ing a pro­nounce­ment, a de­cree, about what you should get and what you shouldn’t get. Nah, we are not part of that process!” he ex­claimed.

He added, “What Im­bert is try­ing to do is, by promis­ing some measly in­crease for those cat­e­gories of work­ers, that it would not even be­gin to ad­dress their woe­ful sit­u­a­tion... to cre­ate a lit­tle vote bank, to cre­ate some bus full/maxi full of peo­ple to clap for them at their po­lit­i­cal ral­lies and so on.”

JTUM is al­so sup­port­ing port au­thor­i­ty work­ers who walked off the job at the Port of Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day due to var­i­ous is­sues, in­clud­ing health and safe­ty con­cerns and stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. Ro­get al­so ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with pi­lots who protest­ed at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day over over­due wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The union leader an­tic­i­pates fur­ther in­dus­tri­al ac­tion across the coun­try, al­though he did not spec­i­fy if it would be led by JTUM.

“You will see as the days, weeks and months wear on but more pre­cise­ly, as the pres­sure is in­creased on peo­ple in this coun­try, you will see more and more of those dis­sat­is­fac­tion demon­strat­ed pub­licly. Peo­ple can’t hold it no more!”

Ro­get grad­ed the bud­get poor­ly, lament­ing its fail­ure to ad­dress crit­i­cal is­sues such as crime and the high cost of liv­ing, which are ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the work­ing class.

“We give the min­is­ter, for yet an­oth­er time, a big F for fail­ure; fail­ure to ad­dress the needs of the peo­ple, fail­ure to ad­dress the needs of the work­ers, fail­ure to ad­dress the suf­fer­ing, fail­ure to ad­dress the crime in this coun­try. We give the min­is­ter a big F, him and his gov­ern­ment! And we are go­ing to take it fur­ther, eh.”

He al­so promised that mea­sures would be tak­en to pro­tect work­ers, though he with­held de­tails.

Sev­er­al pub­lic sec­tor trade unions un­der JTUM’s um­brel­la al­so con­demned the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed five per cent wage in­crease this week.

Among them, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) and the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (FSA). Mean­while, the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion said they are look­ing for­ward to the bar­gain­ing process.