Pres­i­dent of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union Michael Pren­tice wants apolo­gies from the lead­ers of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) and Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM).

Pren­tice, the first union leader to ac­cept the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s (CPO) four per cent wage of­fer last year, said he was crit­i­cised by his trade union col­leagues and black­list­ed in the labour move­ment. How­ev­er, since then oth­er unions have set­tled with the CPO, in­clud­ing the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF), po­lice, prison and fire ser­vices.

“One of the things that I would be de­mand­ing when it is all said and done is a pub­lic apol­o­gy from every one of those trade union lead­ers,” Pren­tice said.

“The re­al­i­ty of the mat­ter is that this trade union is an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion and is not run by JTUM or NATUC. While we are af­fil­i­at­ed with a body, we are an in­de­pen­dent body of peo­ple and we have act­ed in the best in­ter­ests of the work­ers of the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion. What has hap­pened to all of these trade unions at this time, in my mind, is that they have played too much pol­i­tics. They have failed to recog­nise that this coun­try, Trinidad and To­ba­go, has giv­en so much to us.”

Pren­tice added: “I have peo­ple who even went as far as ask­ing me what in­duce­ment I re­ceived. Well, I would have nev­er asked them what in­duce­ment they got even in the face of fire.”

He said mem­bers of his union “can hold our heads up high, we can go to Fyz­abad, we can go any­where and feel hap­py and proud of our­selves be­cause we know we have act­ed in the cor­rect and best in­ter­ests of Trinidad and To­ba­go and it wasn’t about in­di­vid­u­al­ism.”

“Too many times we crit­i­cise politi­cians for mak­ing de­ci­sions that go against our ex­pec­ta­tions,” he said.