Trade union lead­ers have come out in sup­port of the state­ments made by the In­dus­tri­al Court Pres­i­dent on manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion of work­ers against COVID-19.

Last week, dur­ing the open­ing of the new law term for the In­dus­tri­al Court for 2021/2022, Her Ho­n­our Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix stat­ed while em­ploy­ers are per­mit­ted to in­tro­duce a vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy for new em­ploy­ees, con­sul­ta­tion is manda­to­ry for it to ap­ply to ex­ist­ing work­ers.

“In oth­er words, can such a pol­i­cy be in­tro­duced uni­lat­er­al­ly by em­ploy­ers in the work­place? The short an­swer to that ques­tion is NO,” the In­dus­tri­al Court Pres­i­dent had ad­vised.

She al­so sug­gest­ed that unions and em­ploy­ers con­sid­er adding COVID-19 re­lat­ed claus­es when en­ter­ing in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions for new col­lec­tive agree­ments.

In the wake of her state­ments and guid­ance on the mat­ter, the three trade union fed­er­a­tions have en­dorsed her com­ments, and have in­di­cat­ed their will­ing­ness to be part of any so­cial di­a­logue on the is­sue, go­ing for­ward.

The fol­low­ing is the joint state­ment re­leased to­day by the trade union fed­er­a­tions…

The coun­try’s three trade union fed­er­a­tions, Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOS (FI­TUN), would like to pub­licly en­dorse the sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by the Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court, Her Ho­n­our Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix, where­in she spoke to the is­sue of manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion and the im­por­tance of the So­cial Di­a­logue process.

Her Ho­n­our was de­liv­er­ing her ad­dress at the Spe­cial Sit­ting of the In­dus­tri­al Court for the new Law term 2021/2022, and she used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to some crit­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Ju­rispru­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in the con­text of the Glob­al pan­dem­ic, rapid com­mu­ni­ca­tion, mis­in­for­ma­tion, so­cial me­dia dom­i­nance and the so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences that are be­dev­illing the world.

Of sig­nif­i­cant note to the Trade Union Fed­er­a­tions’, were her state­ments on manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions and the crit­i­cal role that a gen­uine So­cial Di­a­logue process can play in the so­cio-eco­nom­ic up­lift­ment of our so­ci­ety.

The In­dus­tri­al Court Pres­i­dent stat­ed that ‘If the is­sue of manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion were a sim­ple one, gov­ern­ments across the globe may have al­ready im­ple­ment­ed na­tion­al manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion poli­cies. In­stead, what we are see­ing is that most gov­ern­ments are ed­u­cat­ing their pop­u­la­tion about the dif­fer­ent types of vac­cines, the im­por­tance of tak­ing a vac­ci­na­tion to fight the Covid 19 virus and they are en­cour­ag­ing their cit­i­zens to get vac­ci­nat­ed.”  We can im­me­di­ate­ly align with this state­ment com­ing from such an em­i­nent ju­rist, as the Fed­er­a­tions would have gone on pub­lic record and stat­ed that we don’t be­lieve that us­ing the bul­ly­ing and threat­en­ing ap­proach to in­spire our cit­i­zens to get vac­ci­nat­ed was go­ing to be an ef­fec­tive strat­e­gy. We ad­vo­cat­ed for ed­u­ca­tion and in­for­ma­tion as a means of dis­play­ing good lead­er­ship at a crit­i­cal time in the coun­try’s’ his­to­ry. We al­so stat­ed that in the ab­sence of any laws which le­git­imizes Manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions, we would op­pose such a prac­tice which we are see­ing open­ly prac­ticed by the Busi­ness sec­tor and sub­lim­i­nal­ly by the gov­ern­ment.

Once again, we ex­press our strong sup­port for the sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by Her Ho­n­our and we urge those in au­thor­i­ty to heed her ad­vice when she stat­ed that “The main is­sue, as I see it, is whether a manda­to­ry Covid 19 vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy can be in­tro­duced as a new term of em­ploy­ment to ex­ist­ing em­ploy­ees with­out dis­cus­sion and con­sul­ta­tion. In oth­er words, can such a pol­i­cy be in­tro­duced uni­lat­er­al­ly by em­ploy­ers in the work­place? The short an­swer to that ques­tion is NO”.

With re­spect to the is­sue of So­cial Di­a­logue, Her Ho­n­our was very clear when she stat­ed that “At the Spe­cial Sit­ting of the In­dus­tri­al Court last year, I spoke of the ur­gent need for tri­par­tite di­a­logue among so­cial; part­ners, name­ly; gov­ern­ment, work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives and em­ploy­ers. I ex­pressed the view then, that ‘we should al­ways bear in mind that there is life af­ter COVID 19 and con­sid­er the im­mense val­ue to be gained if we adopt and ad­here to In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Stan­dards, par­tic­u­lar­ly so­cial di­a­logue to as­sist, to pro­mote and to main­tain a sys­tem of op­por­tu­ni­ties for all and to ob­tain de­cent, pro­duc­tive work in con­di­tions of free­dom, eq­ui­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and dig­ni­ty in the fu­ture. So­cial di­a­logue is key to the ad­just­ment which the work­place has to make dur­ing and af­ter this pan­dem­ic. I can­not over­state the im­por­tance of dis­cus­sion, gen­uine con­sul­ta­tions and com­pro­mise, built through so­cial di­a­logue for the ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures to ad­dress this pan­dem­ic and its im­pact on the Labour mar­ket.”

We must re­call, when the Trade Union Fed­er­a­tions de­cid­ed to with­draw from the gov­ern­ment set up and con­trolled ‘Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, NTAC, we stat­ed that that “TRI­PAR­TISM is a process of So­cial Di­a­logue that has been in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized by the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion, ILO, as one that is con­sti­tut­ed be­tween the three (3) main So­cial Part­ners with­in the econ­o­my, i.e., Gov­ern­ment, Busi­ness and Labour. The ILO de­scribed Tri­par­tism as “the in­ter­ac­tion of gov­ern­ment, em­ploy­ers and work­ers (through their rep­re­sen­ta­tives) as equal and in­de­pen­dent part­ners to seek so­lu­tions to is­sues of com­mon con­cern”.

We went on to state that we would be pre­pared to sit at the ta­ble of Gen­uine So­cial Di­a­logue where each par­ty is re­spect­ed and treat­ed equal­ly and with the deco­rum that is ex­pect­ed of this crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant process. Once again, whilst we ex­press our full sup­port for Her Ho­n­our state­ments, we would not sub­mit our­selves to any cha­rade by this or any gov­ern­ment whose on­ly aim is to gain cheap po­lit­i­cal points on the backs of the work­ing class in this coun­try.

We there­fore, wel­come the call from the Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court and stand ready to be part of the kind of So­cial Di­a­logue that she is speak­ing to, and not the type of So­cial Di­a­logue be­ing prac­ticed by this Gov­ern­ment. We await the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to our rec­om­men­da­tion and call for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures to Legal­ly In­sti­tu­tion­al­ize a gen­uine So­cial Di­a­logue Process to avoid it be­com­ing an­oth­er arm of the Gov­ern­ments Bu­reau­cra­cy and malaise.

In the mean­time, we are ready and pre­pared to de­fend the rights of each and every work­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go from the heavy and ex­ploita­tive hands of some of those un­scrupu­lous em­ploy­ers and the Gov­ern­ment.

JOINT TRADE UNION MOVE­MENT (JTUM)

NA­TION­AL TRADE UN­ON CEN­TRE (NATUC)

FED­ER­A­TION OF IN­DE­PEN­DENT TRADE UNIONS AND NGOS (FI­TUN)