An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Some 279 pri­vate sec­tor work­ers have been re­trenched so far this year, fig­ures from the Min­istry of Labour show.

The da­ta, pro­vid­ed in re­sponse to a for­mal Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) re­quest cov­er­ing Jan­u­ary 14 to Au­gust 18, 2025, shows that 27 com­pa­nies car­ried out re­trench­ment ex­er­cis­es dur­ing the pe­ri­od, with the min­istry re­ceiv­ing 34 phys­i­cal no­tices un­der the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act.

The fig­ures re­flect on­ly pri­vate sec­tor job loss­es of­fi­cial­ly re­port­ed to the min­istry since the start of the year.

Some of the com­pa­nies iden­ti­fied were Dig­i­cel (Trinidad and To­ba­go) Lim­it­ed, SMJ Lim­it­ed, Massy Au­to­mo­tive, Palms Ho­tel, Lone Star Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed, the Home Store, Nes­tle, Hol­i­day Snacks Lim­it­ed, CIBC First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank, Unilever Caribbean Lim­it­ed, Uni­com­er (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed, Works Cred­it Union Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Lim­it­ed, and Laugh­lin and De Gannes Lim­it­ed.

How­ev­er, a break­down of the num­ber of work­ers re­trenched from each com­pa­ny was not forth­com­ing. In its re­sponse, the min­istry ex­plained that re­leas­ing ad­di­tion­al de­tails would vi­o­late Sec­tion 30 of the FOIA, as do­ing so could ex­pose per­son­al in­for­ma­tion about in­di­vid­ual em­ploy­ees and un­der­mine pub­lic trust.

The min­istry al­so cit­ed Sec­tion 21 of the act, not­ing that ful­fill­ing such a re­quest in full would “sub­stan­tial­ly redi­rect the min­istry’s man­pow­er.”

The FOIA re­quest, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 10, 2025, sought the list of com­pa­nies that had is­sued re­trench­ment no­tices, as well as copies of those no­tices and any re­lat­ed in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

The min­istry’s re­sponse con­firms that while the num­ber of re­trench­ment no­tices has not reached cri­sis lev­els, job cuts across the pri­vate sec­tor re­main a con­cern, par­tic­u­lar­ly amid on­go­ing eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty and sub­dued busi­ness con­fi­dence.

Last Sep­tem­ber, Stork Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices T&T Ltd closed its doors, leav­ing 389 work­ers on the bread­line.

Com­ment­ing on the lat­est fig­ures, Em­ploy­ers’ Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) chair­man Ke­ston Nan­coo said the da­ta un­der­scores the on­go­ing strain across both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. He not­ed that ter­mi­na­tions have been tak­ing place at sev­er­al lev­els, in­clud­ing with­in state or­gan­i­sa­tions and em­ploy­ment pro­grammes such as URP and CEPEP.

Nan­coo ex­plained that while em­ploy­ers may have le­git­i­mate rea­sons for re­struc­tur­ing, job loss­es ul­ti­mate­ly dis­rupt what he de­scribed as the “cir­cu­lar flow of mon­ey,” the move­ment of in­come through wages, tax­es, and spend­ing that sus­tains busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and eco­nom­ic growth.

He warned that when em­ploy­ment lev­els fall, it lim­its con­sumer spend­ing and damp­ens busi­ness con­fi­dence, af­fect­ing in­vest­ment and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

“The pri­vate sec­tor is the en­gine of growth and if it is un­able to gen­er­ate jobs, the econ­o­my as a whole will feel the im­pact,” Nan­coo stressed.

He ex­pressed hope that to­day’s na­tion­al Bud­get would in­clude mea­sures to ease fi­nan­cial pres­sure on low­er-in­come earn­ers and sup­port busi­ness­es that are strug­gling to re­tain staff.

Mean­while, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant Sabi­na Gomez not­ed that the fig­ures main­ly re­flect the pri­vate sec­tor, as many ter­mi­na­tions in the state sec­tor are not of­fi­cial­ly clas­si­fied as re­trench­ments but rather as con­tract ter­mi­na­tions. She al­so high­light­ed that a sec­tor-spe­cif­ic break­down would pro­vide clear­er in­sight in­to which in­dus­tries are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the most job loss­es.

Gomez em­pha­sised that re­trench­ment fig­ures should be pub­lic knowl­edge. She ex­plained that da­ta col­lect­ed by the min­istry is al­so shared with the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) and the Cen­tral Bank, mean­ing mul­ti­ple pub­lic bod­ies hold this in­for­ma­tion.