Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union’s (OW­TU) Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) branch has called for the re­moval of UTT ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Cud­joe, ac­cus­ing him of be­ing in­sen­si­tive to work­ers af­ter he de­clared that the coun­try does not have the mon­ey to meet out­stand­ing wage set­tle­ments.

In a scathing bul­letin ti­tled “Take Yuh Books and Go Cud­joe,” the branch said work­ers should not be made to bear the con­se­quences of UTT’s fi­nan­cial prob­lems, par­tic­u­lar­ly when some em­ploy­ees have re­mained on salaries dat­ing back to 2007.

The union’s crit­i­cism fol­lows com­ments by Cud­joe last week in which he said the Gov­ern­ment sim­ply did not have the mon­ey to sat­is­fy all out­stand­ing wage de­mands.

Cud­joe said Gov­ern­ment in­her­it­ed sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial chal­lenges and dis­closed that UTT it­self had a $24 mil­lion deficit.

He sug­gest­ed that set­tle­ments may ul­ti­mate­ly re­quire a com­bi­na­tion of cash and bonds, while ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that an am­i­ca­ble agree­ment could be reached.

How­ev­er, the OW­TU re­ject­ed Cud­joe’s po­si­tion, ar­gu­ing that UTT work­ers did not cre­ate the in­sti­tu­tion’s fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and should not be ex­pect­ed to pay the price for them.

“The bla­tant mis­man­age­ment of the uni­ver­si­ty’s fi­nances is not a bur­den for the work­ers to car­ry,” the branch said.

It claimed Cud­joe earns more than $100,000 per month as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man while some UTT em­ploy­ees con­tin­ue to earn ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4,000 month­ly af­ter 19 years.

The union con­trast­ed Cud­joe’s al­leged re­mu­ner­a­tion with that of pre­vi­ous UTT chair­men, who it claimed re­ceived stipends of less than $8,000 month­ly.

The branch al­so re­vis­it­ed the uni­ver­si­ty’s long­stand­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions dis­putes, say­ing work­ers were not re­spon­si­ble for the fi­nan­cial cri­sis at the in­sti­tu­tion or the re­trench­ment of more than 200 em­ploy­ees in 2019, which it de­scribed as il­le­gal.

Ac­cord­ing to the union, suc­ces­sive UTT man­age­ment teams have failed to ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions dat­ing back more than a decade.

It said man­age­ment has re­fused to prop­er­ly en­gage in bi­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tions since 2013 and claimed the uni­ver­si­ty ini­tial­ly of­fered ze­ro per cent in­creas­es for 2014, 2015 and 2016.

The branch said an­oth­er pro­pos­al amount­ed to in­creas­es of ze­ro and two per cent over the six-year 2014-to-2019 ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­od, which the union re­ject­ed.

It al­leged those pro­pos­als were on­ly pre­sent­ed around court dates in an at­tempt by UTT to demon­strate that it was mak­ing ef­forts to re­solve the out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The union al­so took aim at Cud­joe over an Eman­ci­pa­tion event, ac­cus­ing him of us­ing the oc­ca­sion to sell his books while some em­ploy­ees were strug­gling to pur­chase school­books for their chil­dren.

“Shame on you, Cud­joe, for en­joy­ing over $100,000 in salary as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man while fel­low com­rades are earn­ing $4,000 per month and still claim­ing there is no mon­ey,” the branch said.

It urged Cud­joe to stop dis­cussing ne­go­ti­a­tions through the me­dia and in­stead meet di­rect­ly with the union.

“Do not ne­go­ti­ate in the me­dia. Come to the ta­ble with the Union to ne­go­ti­ate in good faith to bring work­ers’ salaries in­to the present day,” it said.

The branch al­so called on the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing to in­ter­vene, de­scrib­ing the min­istry’s si­lence on the dis­pute as “deaf­en­ing.”

“The work­ers at UTT de­serve a bet­ter day with bet­ter pay! If you can­not set­tle our ne­go­ti­a­tions, then ‘Take yuh books and go Cud­joe!’” the bul­letin added.

Guardian Me­dia made sev­er­al at­tempts to get a re­sponse from Cud­joe; how­ev­er, he could not be reached on his mo­bile phone up to press time.