Min­is­ter of Labour, Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, Sen­a­tor Leroy Bap­tiste has pledged to re­build the tri­par­tite frame­work he once fa­mous­ly walked away from as a union leader.

He made the com­mit­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing while de­liv­er­ing his first ma­jor pol­i­cy ad­dress at the 113th Ses­sion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Con­fer­ence in Gene­va, Switzer­land.

The an­nounce­ment car­ries par­tic­u­lar weight, giv­en Bap­tiste’s his­to­ry as for­mer pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), where he led a dra­mat­ic with­draw­al from the gov­ern­ment tri­par­tite com­mit­tee along­side oth­er labour lead­ers in protest of what they called in­suf­fi­cient union in­put.

Bap­tiste was then known for his fierce crit­i­cism of gov­ern­ment labour poli­cies.

Now speak­ing from the oth­er side of the ta­ble, Bap­tiste pledged to “re-es­tab­lish and re­vi­talise the na­tion­al tri­par­tite body to im­prove our di­a­logue with labour bod­ies”.

“The dri­vers of eco­nom­ic growth, so­cial well-be­ing, and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment must em­anate from the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort of gov­ern­ment, work­ers, em­ploy­ers, and oth­er so­cial part­ners,” Bap­tiste told in­ter­na­tion­al del­e­gates.

“Democ­ra­cy is alive and well when peo­ple are en­gaged in a process in which they have a voice.”

Be­yond re­build­ing tri­par­tite re­la­tions, Bap­tiste out­lined an ex­ten­sive pol­i­cy agen­da that in­clud­ed mod­erni­sa­tion of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act and oth­er labour leg­is­la­tion, fa­cil­i­ta­tion of union recog­ni­tion in state en­ti­ties through tri­par­tite frame­works and sup­port from the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ILO) and a com­mit­ment to tri­par­tite pol­i­cy­mak­ing as a tool to strength­en de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance and pro­tect hu­man rights in the work­place.

Bap­tiste, who as­sumed of­fice in May 2025, praised the ILO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al

Gilbert F Houng­bo’s fo­cus on what he termed the “jobs-rights-growth nexus”—the in­ter­sec­tion of job cre­ation, work­er rights, and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment—en­dors­ing calls for stronger de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions to sup­port this frame­work.

He al­so re­it­er­at­ed T&T’s ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in re­gion­al and hemi­spher­ic labour dis­cus­sions, and praised the sup­port re­ceived from the ILO Sub­re­gion­al Of­fice for the Caribbean in Port-of-Spain.