An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Work­ers at the Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) staged a protest in front of the build­ing on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, over stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. 

The work­ers are now call­ing for heads of the man­age­ment team to roll, ac­cus­ing them of de­lib­er­ate­ly im­ped­ing the process. 

The work­ers gath­ered dur­ing their lunch break at 11.30 am armed with plac­ards chant­i­ng “The CEO must go.” Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) branch chair­per­son Nazreen Haynes-Davis said the union and man­age­ment start­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions in De­cem­ber, but to date, the com­pa­ny has not laid a prop­er per­cent­age on the ta­ble. 

She said good faith ne­go­ti­a­tions are not tak­ing place, and the union al­so has a prob­lem with the style of man­age­ment, as she claimed they are not fol­low­ing the col­lec­tive agree­ments. 

 She said the last thing that prob­a­bly broke the camel’s back was that the ne­go­ti­a­tions were not run­ning on time.

“So we are with­in the third year of the ne­go­ti­a­tion it’s for 2022, 2023, 2024 in­to 2025, so that’s the pe­ri­od we com­plain about. We would have sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als in April and to­day they say that they haven’t got­ten the ap­proval from the board, but this is 14 months af­ter the fact,” Haynes-Davis lament­ed. 

The union’s branch chair­per­son claimed it ap­peared to be de­layed on pur­pose. She said a fair wage of­fer must be giv­en as the state-con­trolled NFM in its fi­nan­cials for 2022 made $6 mil­lion, in 2023 $35 mil­lion and in 2024 saw $45 mil­lion in prof­its.

“So some­thing rea­son­able for the work­ers.”  

Asked what a fair of­fer was, Haynes-Davis in­di­cat­ed be­tween 10 and 12 per cent. 

She said the work­ers will protest dai­ly un­til man­age­ment meets with the union. If noth­ing is re­solved, they will head to the Labour Min­is­ter to re­port a break­down in ne­go­ti­a­tions. 

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, NFM’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ian Mitchell said that man­age­ment is await­ing the board of di­rec­tors’ ap­proval for a re­vised of­fer for ne­go­ti­a­tions. 

“I un­der­stand that this is an emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tion as ne­go­ti­a­tions have been some­what pro­tract­ed. How­ev­er, my team and I are do­ing what we can to bring this to a close in the short­est pos­si­ble time. I still love them,” Mitchell stat­ed. 

Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste, when con­tact­ed, said he would have to get fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion be­fore com­ment­ing.

Mean­while, the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of T&T (Natuc) called on NFM to im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress long-stand­ing is­sues sur­round­ing stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions with the SWW­TU, an af­fil­i­ate of Natuc.

Natuc said it has been ad­vised that the com­pa­ny has re­fused to move be­yond an of­fer of a one per cent wage in­crease per year for the 2022–2024 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od, de­spite in­fla­tion rates.

 “The of­fer of 1x1x1 is a clear sig­nal that the man­age­ment is out of touch with the re­al­i­ties fac­ing work­ing fam­i­lies. This amounts to star­va­tion wages and can­not be ac­cept­ed,” Natuc stat­ed. 

Natuc al­leged the com­pa­ny has been cre­at­ing new po­si­tions and rush­ing them through board ap­proval with­out any con­sul­ta­tion with the union, a di­rect vi­o­la­tion of es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions norms.

“Natuc is call­ing on the man­age­ment of NFM to im­me­di­ate­ly cease these un­fair prac­tices and en­gage in mean­ing­ful, good-faith ne­go­ti­a­tions with the SWW­TU,” it added. 

In its fi­nan­cials in April, NFM re­port­ed an $8.8 mil­lion or 25 per cent in­crease in year-on-year prof­its af­ter tax, from $35.4 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2023, to $44.1 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2024. How­ev­er, NFM al­so saw a nine per cent dip in over­all rev­enue down to $523.4 mil­lion in 2024, in com­par­i­son to $577.3 mil­lion in 2023.