The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) says it too has been in­formed by a re­li­able source from with­in the In­dus­tri­al Court that the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go has tak­en the de­ci­sion not to re­new the con­tract of the cur­rent Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Her Ho­n­our, Mrs Deb­o­rah Thomas Fe­lix. In a me­dia re­lease JTUM said, mak­ing mat­ters worse is that Thomas Fe­lix is present­ly out of the ju­ris­dic­tion and was on­ly in­formed one day be­fore the ex­pi­ra­tion of her con­tract.

“ This ac­tion is not on­ly a fun­da­men­tal breach of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prin­ci­ples and prac­tices but al­so very dis­re­spect­ful to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court, the Of­fice­hold­er, and the In­dus­tri­al Court as a whole. The man­ner in which this de­ci­sion was made and im­ple­ment­ed, es­pe­cial­ly with such an im­por­tant of­fice, rais­es very se­ri­ous con­cerns,” JTUM said.

The union body said Thomas Fe­lix, has served this coun­try over the last 12 years as the Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court with fair­ness and with­out bias. It said notwith­stand­ing that the trade union move­ment was not al­ways pleased with some of the judg­ments by the Pres­i­dent, it did have re­spect for her wealth of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence, and there­fore, the court has gained the con­fi­dence of work­ers as an in­sti­tu­tion of fair­ness.

“ The in­de­pen­dence of the In­dus­tri­al Court has to be main­tained for it to con­tin­ue hav­ing le­git­i­ma­cy to me­di­ate the re­la­tion­ship be­tween work­ers and em­ploy­ers,” it said.

JTUM said in ad­di­tion, JTUM recog­nised the in­creased lev­el of ef­fi­cien­cy at the In­dus­tri­al Court, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing the back­log of cas­es and be­lieves that this lev­el of ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness in dis­pens­ing jus­tice in­de­pen­dent­ly dis­played by the Pres­i­dent should be main­tained.

“ We, there­fore, call on the Pres­i­dent, Her Ex­cel­len­cy Mrs Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, to pro­vide the coun­try with a ba­sis for her de­ci­sion, as such a de­ci­sion will have se­vere im­pli­ca­tions for the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions land­scape in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” JTUM said.

The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent is yet to con­firm or de­ny the claims be­ing made by both JTUM and NATUC.