Ot­to Car­ring­ton

and Ke­jan Haynes

When trade unions marched out­side min­is­ters’ homes un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, it was framed as law­ful in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

Now, with health­care work­ers float­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sim­i­lar ac­tion un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has con­demned the idea as “ha­rass­ment, in­tim­i­da­tion and rep­re­hen­si­ble con­duct.”

The irony has not been lost on the trade union move­ment.

Padarath’s com­ments came af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) said health­care work­ers had dis­cussed protest­ing out­side min­is­ters’ homes if re­stric­tions un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) con­tin­ue to lim­it demon­stra­tions in tra­di­tion­al lo­ca­tions. The as­so­ci­a­tion stressed that no fi­nal de­ci­sion had been made and point­ed out that such tac­tics had been used pre­vi­ous­ly by oth­er unions, in­clud­ing the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU).

In a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, Padarath ac­cused groups con­sid­er­ing such ac­tion of be­ing dri­ven by “ha­tred for the UNC, racism and prej­u­dice.”

“Threats of ter­ror­is­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials’ homes means that these en­ti­ties be­lieve that it is OK to ter­rorise chil­dren, grand­chil­dren and some­times the el­der­ly who share homes with pub­lic of­fi­cials,” Padarath said.

How­ev­er, his­to­ry sug­gests protest­ing out­side the homes of pub­lic of­fi­cials is hard­ly a new phe­nom­e­non.

In De­cem­ber 2020, for­mer Lennox Pe­tro­le­um work­ers protest­ed out­side the home of the com­pa­ny’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer in San Fer­nan­do, over un­paid wages they said had been award­ed through court rul­ings. As po­lice at­tempt­ed to dis­perse the gath­er­ing, one pro­test­er shout­ed: “The po­lice pro­tect­ing the rich and mighty.”

On Christ­mas Day in 2021, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ac­tivist Vic­tor Roberts took his in­fa­mous cof­fin protest to the Val­sayn home of then health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

Roberts rang the min­is­ter’s door­bell while car­ry­ing a cof­fin, say­ing he want­ed Deyals­ingh to un­der­stand that the num­ber of COVID-19 deaths was un­ac­cept­able.

Years lat­er, in No­vem­ber 2024, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get led T&TEC work­ers out­side a prop­er­ty owned by then pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les in Ari­ma.

The work­ers were protest­ing wages, staff short­ages and con­cerns over con­tract em­ploy­ment.

Ro­get de­fend­ed the demon­stra­tion at the time, de­scrib­ing it as a “le­gal, law­ful, peace­ful pick­et on their own time.”

That same month, the OW­TU joined the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) and the Avi­a­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Al­lied Work­ers’ Union in a protest out­side then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s.

Pro­test­ers de­mand­ed that Row­ley “take his band of ban­dits and go now,” while ob­ject­ing to pro­posed salary in­creas­es for se­nior of­fice hold­ers through the Salary Re­view Com­mis­sion.

The CWU yes­ter­day ac­cused Padarath of hypocrisy, point­ing out that trade unions fre­quent­ly chal­lenged the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion with demon­stra­tions, ad­vo­ca­cy cam­paigns and pub­lic crit­i­cism.

“Unions lis­tened, ag­i­tat­ed, protest­ed and ad­vo­cat­ed with the bless­ing of the op­po­si­tion. Isn’t that what is re­quired in a democ­ra­cy?” the union asked.

The CWU al­so ques­tioned whether crit­i­cism that was once en­cour­aged by those in op­po­si­tion is now be­ing por­trayed as dan­ger­ous be­cause the po­lit­i­cal land­scape has shift­ed.

“It is, there­fore, hyp­o­crit­i­cal for him who once re­lied up­on the very said trade unions while in Op­po­si­tion to now con­demn those same voic­es when they are now again ex­er­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights against his Gov­ern­ment,” the union said.

The union main­tained that if Padarath be­lieves demon­stra­tions out­side pub­lic of­fi­cials’ homes are in­ap­pro­pri­ate, that po­si­tion is open to de­bate.

How­ev­er, it ques­tioned where cit­i­zens are ex­pect­ed to protest if re­stric­tions con­tin­ue to ex­pand.

“If not out­side min­istries, Par­lia­ment, gov­ern­ment build­ings and not in tra­di­tion­al pub­lic spaces and now not near min­is­ters’ homes, then what re­mains of the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to peace­ful as­sem­bly?” the CWU asked.

The is­sue has gained promi­nence fol­low­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of des­ig­nat­ed no-protest zones un­der the SoE reg­u­la­tions, which unions ar­gue have sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­strict­ed where demon­stra­tions can take place.

How­ev­er, while the OW­TU was ab­sent from a re­cent Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) me­dia con­fer­ence ad­dress­ing con­cerns over the protest re­stric­tions, JTUM sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ozzi War­wick re­leased a state­ment on be­half of union pub­licly de­fend­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to peace­ful protest.

JTUM de­scribed Le­gal No­tice No 40 of 2026 as a “mas­sive over­reach of au­thor­i­ty” by the po­lice and said it dis­played “an alarm­ing in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the Labour Move­ment and the av­er­age cit­i­zens who may wish to en­gage in le­git­i­mate, law­ful and peace­ful protests.”

The union said the move­ment has al­ways com­plied with the law, say­ing there was “ab­solute­ly no re­cent ev­i­dence to sug­gest the con­trary.”

JTUM al­so point­ed out that it has con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed ef­forts aimed at re­duc­ing crime and vi­o­lence and ac­knowl­edged the need to pro­tect.