KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to part­ner with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) on sev­er­al is­sues, the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) says it will re­main apo­lit­i­cal.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence dur­ing Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in Fyz­abad yes­ter­day, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said oth­er trade unions and as­so­ci­a­tions are free to sup­port any po­lit­i­cal par­ty but the teach­ers’ union will not mount any plat­form that seems to favour one side over an­oth­er.

How­ev­er, TTUTA be­lieves in sol­i­dar­i­ty among trade unions as there is strength in num­bers, he added. TTUTA held the me­dia con­fer­ence be­cause they were not among the speak­ers at JTUM’s ral­ly at Char­lie King Junc­tion, Fyz­abad.

“We are say­ing that even if JTUM says it is sup­port­ing a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, we are not in that po­si­tion. We will al­ways stay neu­tral,” Lum Kin said.

“TTUTA had that prin­ci­pled stance from its in­cep­tion and we con­tin­ue to hold that view that TTUTA must be able to agree or dis­agree with any gov­ern­ment and our mem­bers must be free to sup­port any po­lit­i­cal par­ty with­out any fear or favour from the as­so­ci­a­tion.”

Pressed on the is­sue, Lum Kin said JTUM pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get re­cent­ly spoke about part­ner­ing with a po­lit­i­cal par­ty on some is­sues, so TTUTA found it nec­es­sary to make a state­ment to its mem­bers and the na­tion that it does not share that po­si­tion and will re­main neu­tral.

He said the union’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary Kady Beck­les wrote to JTUM ex­press­ing its po­si­tion but had not spo­ken to mem­bers about it yet.

Lum Kin said TTUTA’s role is to ad­dress labour is­sues, par­tic­u­lar­ly those af­fect­ing teach­ers. He said the union has been grap­pling with long­stand­ing is­sues, in­clud­ing the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of leave and there are prob­lems with up­grades and pro­mo­tions.

He said TTUTA un­der­stands the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s chal­lenges and wants the au­thor­i­ties to ad­e­quate­ly re­source the body so it can ful­fil its man­dates and fill all school va­can­cies quick­ly.

Lum Kin said there are is­sues of cul­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) has been push­ing on stu­dents and teach­ers with­out pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary re­sources. In ef­fect, he ex­plained, the MoE is chang­ing the terms and con­di­tions of teach­ers’ em­ploy­ment with­out the re­quired ne­go­ti­a­tions with TTUTA.

There are con­tract­ed teach­ers fill­ing va­can­cies and struc­tur­al is­sues, he said.

“The Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion has agreed that we have age­ing schools. How­ev­er, they are not ad­dress­ing it in a time­ly man­ner, such that you have sev­er­al OSH is­sues com­ing up dur­ing the term. How can our na­tion’s teach­ers and ed­u­ca­tors, ed­u­cate our chil­dren prop­er­ly with these things grap­pling be­hind them?”

Lum Kin said the MoE al­so owes in­cre­ments and back pay to cur­rent and re­tired teach­ers.