Jesse Ramdeo

Em­ploy­ees of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), who, de­spite be­ing hand­ed their re­trench­ment let­ters on Tues­day, opt­ed to show up at their work­placeon Wednes­day, in ac­cor­dance with a court or­der, were shut out over al­leged fears by the com­pa­ny of in­ter­nal van­dal­ism.

A rul­ing by In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix on Tues­day hand­ed 376 work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union a life­line by per­mit­ting them ac­cess to their work­place, as they were in­struct­ed to re­tain their terms and con­di­tions of their em­ploy­ment be­fore they were hand­ed their re­trench­ment let­ters.

How­ev­er, CWU sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Clyde El­der ex­plained that those who turned up on TSTT premis­es were turned back.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, El­der said, “Lawyers of TSTT had in­di­cat­ed that if peo­ple re­port­ed for work, they were fear­ful of in­ci­dents of sab­o­tage even though there was no ev­i­dence. There were some em­ploy­ees who at­tempt­ed to come to work to­day (yes­ter­day) and they were de­nied en­try on­to the com­pound by their man­agers. They were told they will not be al­lowed on the com­pound, that ba­si­cal­ly there’s noth­ing for them to do.”

El­der said af­ter be­ing left dis­con­nect­ed from TSTT, em­ploy­ees were grap­pling with un­cer­tain­ty.

“The work­ers are very much de­mo­ti­vat­ed, they are dis­en­chant­ed, they are de­ject­ed, they are an­gry in some in­stances,” he said.

Last month, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les con­firmed that TSTT was hit by a cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty at­tack that was di­rect­ed at a num­ber of the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­nal-on­ly so­lu­tions/ap­pli­ca­tions.

Tues­day’s re­trench­ment of 468 work­ers fol­lowed the ter­mi­na­tion of 503 work­ers back in 2018.

On both oc­ca­sions, TSTT cit­ed the need for or­gan­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion for prof­itabil­i­ty as the cause for the re­trench­ment ex­er­cis­es.

With just un­der 1,000 work­ers cut in four years, El­der said he sus­pect­ed more would fol­low.

“Maybe about 500 or 600 em­ploy­ees still re­main at the com­pa­ny and I’m speak­ing about to­tal em­ploy­ees from very high man­age­ment to low down to the last ju­nior staff. Those per­sons are do­ing the job of 2,500 and what is hap­pen­ing, those per­sons will find it hard to cope and ex­e­cute func­tions that they need to ex­e­cute with more staff and when it can­not be done, it will be con­tract­ed out and make a case for fur­ther down­siz­ing,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to El­der, there ap­peared to be a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to stamp out the com­pa­ny.

“The com­pa­ny and the Gov­ern­ment’s strate­gic goal in all of this is to dec­i­mate TSTT, to get rid of TSTT and by do­ing that, you get rid of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union and you get rid of de­cent-pay­ing jobs and you give all of those ser­vices to Am­plia. You will hear Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to sell all of its shares or some of its shares and have got­ten a buy­er for Ca­ble and Wire­less shares, that is all part of dec­i­mat­ing the com­pa­ny,” he said.

How­ev­er, the union boss has as­sured that the voice of the im­pact­ed em­ploy­ees will be heard.

He said, “We have re­quest­ed per­mis­sion from the po­lice to march from TSTT’s of­fice on Hen­ry Street to par­lia­ment Fri­day from 10. We ex­pect all the em­ploy­ees served with re­trench­ment no­tices, all of the re­tirees who are still owed mon­ey, all of the re­trenched work­ers from 2018 who are still owed mon­ey, all the em­ploy­ees cur­rent­ly work­ing at TSTT now and still owed mon­ey, we ex­pect all of them to come.”

Sev­er­al at­tempts were made to con­tact TSTT CEO Lisa Agard for a re­sponse to El­der’s claims.

How­ev­er, in a re­sponse to the claim that work­ers were de­nied ac­cess to their work­places on Wednes­day, TSTT com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Jan­nelle David said, “No in­di­vid­ual rep­re­sent­ed by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union was de­nied ac­cess to any TSTT build­ing.”

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