Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

As the Gov­ern­ment pre­pares to de­liv­er its mid-year Bud­get re­view on June 18, sev­er­al trade unions are urg­ing that the mea­sures be peo­ple-cen­tred and aimed at ad­dress­ing long-stand­ing is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers and vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas, who has open­ly sup­port­ed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and the Coali­tion of In­ter­est, told Guardian Me­dia that no mean­ing­ful progress on wage ne­go­ti­a­tions is ex­pect­ed be­fore the na­tion­al bud­get lat­er this year.

Thomas, who is sched­uled to meet with Min­is­ter of Fi­nance De­ven­dranath Tan­coo this week, con­firmed that while ne­go­ti­a­tions will be dis­cussed, no im­me­di­ate of­fer is an­tic­i­pat­ed from the Gov­ern­ment.

“I haven’t re­al­ly con­tact­ed them on the mid-year re­view,” Thomas said. “I am sched­uled to meet with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance this week, and in that meet­ing, of course, we will have the dis­cus­sion of ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

How­ev­er, she stressed that the Gov­ern­ment’s cur­rent fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions may de­lay any set­tle­ment.

“I main­tain that I do not an­tic­i­pate any­thing in terms of ne­go­ti­a­tions while the Gov­ern­ment deals with its oth­er com­mit­ments,” she ex­plained. “In the in­ter­im, I don’t ex­pect any of­fer un­til the next bud­get, which is due around Sep­tem­ber or Oc­to­ber.”

Mean­while, the pres­i­dent of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) and Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) Michael An­nisette re­it­er­at­ed the ur­gent need for a peo­ple-cen­tred ap­proach to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, call­ing on the new ad­min­is­tra­tion to recog­nise the un­tapped po­ten­tial of the mar­itime sec­tor as a key dri­ver of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

“We be­lieve that the mar­itime sec­tor has a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties. We’ve been rais­ing this is­sue for years—even dur­ing the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion,” he said. “If you check our bud­get pro­pos­als, you’ll see we’ve con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for a strong fo­cus on this sec­tor.”

An­nisette added that the union hoped the new Gov­ern­ment un­der­stood the strate­gic im­por­tance of the mar­itime in­dus­try in cre­at­ing jobs and sup­port­ing long-term growth.

“It’s about more than mov­ing goods,” he said. “It’s about build­ing an in­dus­try that sup­ports job cre­ation, train­ing, and long-term eco­nom­ic growth.”

He al­so flagged per­sis­tent is­sues sur­round­ing the Port Au­thor­i­ty and called for a res­o­lu­tion to long-stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions in­volv­ing dock work­ers.

“These are fun­da­men­tal mat­ters that must be ad­dressed if we are se­ri­ous about trans­for­ma­tion,” An­nisette added.

Calls for mean­ing­ful tri­par­tite di­a­logue

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer is al­so call­ing on for­mer labour lead­ers now in po­si­tions of pow­er to move from “plac­ard to pol­i­cy” and take de­ci­sive ac­tion to ad­dress work­ers’ con­cerns.

“The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union will be watch­ing close­ly,” Ogeer stat­ed, “es­pe­cial­ly those three for­mer ti­tans of labour now sit­ting in seats of au­ton­o­my and de­ci­sion-mak­ing. This is their time to make a dif­fer­ence in the hol­low cham­bers of Par­lia­ment.”

The CWU al­so raised con­cerns about the con­tin­ued abuse of con­tract labour in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. She said work­ers in some com­pa­nies had been em­ployed for years with­out ever be­ing made per­ma­nent or see­ing any ad­vance­ment.

She al­so stressed the need for mean­ing­ful tri­par­tite di­a­logue be­tween the State, em­ploy­ers, and unions. She called for trans­paren­cy in im­ple­ment­ing In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (IRAC) pro­pos­als and ad­vo­cat­ed for stronger com­mit­ment to de­cent work stan­dards, cit­ing Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley as a mod­el of pro­gres­sive labour lead­er­ship.

T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said the union was watch­ing the mid-year re­view with keen in­ter­est, hop­ing it sig­nalled a strong com­mit­ment to ed­u­ca­tion and teacher wel­fare.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Lum Kin said TTUTA was con­fi­dent the ad­min­is­tra­tion would con­tin­ue pri­ori­tis­ing ed­u­ca­tion but said sev­er­al out­stand­ing is­sues must be ad­dressed be­fore the fi­nan­cial year ends.

“TTUTA is con­fi­dent that this ad­min­is­tra­tion will fo­cus on ed­u­ca­tion through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Lum Kin said. “We are mind­ful of the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion fac­ing the coun­try, but there are key ar­eas that need ur­gent at­ten­tion.”

Among the union’s top pri­or­i­ties are the im­ple­men­ta­tion of new salaries and pay­ment of ar­rears for 2020-2023 and en­sur­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, specif­i­cal­ly the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy, re­ceives nec­es­sary al­lo­ca­tions to pay gra­tu­ities for long-serv­ing con­tract teach­ers.

An­oth­er is­sue raised was the teach­ers’ Unimed Group Health Plan. In Au­gust last year, TTUTA mem­bers protest­ed over the plan and the slow pace at which their claims are be­ing processed. They al­so said it ap­peared the plan was al­so in deficit.