Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to live up to its promis­es to work­ers.

In her mes­sage, Beck­les de­scribed Labour Day as a com­mem­o­ra­tion of “a defin­ing chap­ter in our na­tion­al sto­ry” and paid trib­ute to labour pi­o­neers whose strug­gles trans­formed the so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic land­scape of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She al­so high­light­ed the con­tri­bu­tion of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) un­der the lead­er­ship of Dr Er­ic Williams, not­ing that the In­dus­tri­al Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Act of 1965 es­tab­lished a frame­work for col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and in­dus­tri­al dis­pute res­o­lu­tion, in­clud­ing the cre­ation of the In­dus­tri­al Court.

But Beck­les ar­gued that many work­ers are now fac­ing eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty.

“This Labour Day, thou­sands of work­ers are fac­ing un­cer­tain­ty af­ter be­ing sent home by a Prime Min­is­ter who has shown lit­tle com­pas­sion for work­ing peo­ple,” she stat­ed.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader fur­ther con­tend­ed that the Gov­ern­ment had failed to cre­ate new em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for dis­placed work­ers.

“Af­ter dis­miss­ing thou­sands of work­ers, this UNC Gov­ern­ment has failed to cre­ate a sin­gle new source of em­ploy­ment for those left be­hind. That is not lead­er­ship—it is a be­tray­al of the very peo­ple whose hard work keeps our na­tion mov­ing,” Beck­les said.

She al­so raised con­cerns about the cost of liv­ing, crime and the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, warn­ing that emer­gency pow­ers must be ex­er­cised care­ful­ly and with re­spect for con­sti­tu­tion­al free­doms.

“The fight against crime is nec­es­sary and ur­gent, but it must al­ways be ac­com­pa­nied by trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­spect for the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues that gen­er­a­tions be­fore us strug­gled to se­cure,” she said.

Beck­les said Labour Day should al­so serve as a re­minder of the im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing the free­doms of as­sem­bly, or­gan­i­sa­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy that were cen­tral to the labour move­ment’s suc­cess.