Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union pres­i­dent Michael Pren­tice says he is un­moved by the com­ments be­ing made about him by fel­low labour lead­ers and is con­vinced he did “the right thing” for his mem­bers.

Pren­tice and his union ac­cept­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s 4 per cent wage in­crease of­fer on Mon­day, which left mem­bers of the trade union move­ment stunned and call­ing him a trai­tor to the move­ment.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Pren­tice said he is now look­ing on at the lev­el of an­i­mos­i­ty com­ing from his com­rades.

“What we are pay­ing very close at­ten­tion to is that there is a lev­el of ha­tred and an­i­mos­i­ty and a sense of bit­ter­ness that has evolved in the trade union move­ment,” he said.

Ex­plain­ing why the AWU de­cid­ed to ac­cept the of­fer from the CPO, Pren­tice said his ex­ec­u­tive de­cid­ed to look ob­jec­tive­ly at the sit­u­a­tion as it re­lates to the work­ers the union rep­re­sents.

“The ex­ec­u­tive of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union took a po­si­tion as an ex­ec­u­tive and de­cid­ed to en­gage the CPO and look for a way around the 4%, be­cause it is ob­vi­ous none of us want­ed the 4% and I have said this open­ly, as I would have said it be­fore...but we weighed all odds and we weighed all your op­tions that is avail­able to us. We seek out­side in­ter­ven­tion in terms of econ­o­mists and so on, hav­ing dis­cus­sions so that we will make an in­formed de­ci­sion not on­ly on be­half of us but on be­half of the wider work­ing body... they are still work­ing with 2013 salary and it ap­pears that no one cares.”

He added, “This de­ci­sion we took is one which we be­lieve is just right and fair as it re­lates to the ne­go­ti­a­tion process. Ne­go­ti­a­tions have drift­ed away from free col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing to de­cay that we could do with­out.”

But while Pren­tice has no re­grets for agree­ing to ac­cept the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer, he said he is dis­ap­point­ed with the Joint Trade Union Move­ment.

“We would have had a meet­ing here yes­ter­day (Mon­day) and we ba­si­cal­ly recog­nised com­ing out of the meet­ing, how the body felt about Amal­ga­mat­ed. And what is strange is that we were there from in­cep­tion, the fight and the war that would have gone on to cre­ate the body, JTUM, and in less than a day, some of my col­leagues would have put on the What­sApp chat that I am a PNM gen­er­al coun­cil mem­ber. It gets ug­ly, it gets dirty, it is some­thing that lots of us in this fra­ter­ni­ty would have liked not to hap­pen.”

Pren­tice added that he will not stoop to “gut­ter” be­hav­iour and will not be hound­ed.

“I am not here to bring down any­one, I will not do that. I don’t have time for that. If I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a trade union leader and with the ex­ec­u­tive for whom we work, as a body, I have plen­ty of work to be done and it can­not be that we will go down in the gut­ter.”

He added that he be­lieves the AWU did the right thing for its mem­bers.

“I am if I am a trai­tor to­day, I have col­leagues who are big­ger trai­tors in this coun­try be­cause they jump like a grasshop­per from one side of the fence to the oth­er. I am de­ter­mined to be res­olute in the de­ci­sion tak­en... I strong­ly be­lieve with all con­vic­tion that the de­ci­sion tak­en is ab­solute­ly the right one for the mo­ment at this time.”