OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Work­ers’ Union (TTP­WU) has ac­cused the TTPOST man­age­ment of at­tempt­ing to un­der­mine the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the union and its mem­bers.

It’s the lat­est de­vel­op­ment af­ter postal work­ers urged their union to ac­cept the four per cent wage in­crease be­ing of­fered by Gov­ern­ment.

Yes­ter­day, the TTP­WU sub­mit­ted a let­ter to the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dar­ryl Din­di­al on the on­go­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. How­ev­er, union mem­bers are still re­quest­ing a meet­ing with the union’s ex­ec­u­tive to dis­cuss the mat­ter fur­ther.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a one-page let­ter which called for the ex­ec­u­tive to meet ei­ther to­day or to­mor­row at the Na­tion­al Mail­ing Cen­tre, Pi­ar­co, to dis­cuss ac­cept­ing the four per cent wage of­fer, the job eval­u­a­tion process, and a re­cent union vote.

How­ev­er, the union has ac­cused TTPOST man­age­ment of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion, which it said has caused dis­cord among work­ers.

“Stop it. Stop it. One of our of­fi­cers was even threat­ened this morn­ing (yes­ter­day) by an­oth­er work­er. If a fight breaks out in TTPOST, where work­ers are fight­ing each oth­er over this four per cent is­sue, the man­age­ment of TTPOST will bear full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it. We do not want that,” TTP­WU gen­er­al sec­re­tary David Forbes said.

“We want peace and a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to this is­sue. We have the four per cent, and we are go­ing to counter-pro­pose by the 17th (Feb­ru­ary). We made it clear in the ne­go­ti­a­tions meet­ing (last) Fri­day that this is­sue is not one where we sim­ply ac­cept a pro­pos­al with­out coun­ter­ing. The work­ers have re­ject­ed it, and counter-propos­ing means we will sit, dis­cuss, and re­turn with some­thing we be­lieve to be just, in­clud­ing the 18.6 per cent.”

Forbes claimed that af­ter the meet­ing last Fri­day at Drew Manor, San­ta Cruz, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of Hu­man Re­sources in­formed the union that man­age­ment had con­tact­ed the CPO, who re­quest­ed a for­mal let­ter from the union.

Join­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the union, Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh strong­ly con­demned the man­age­ment, ac­cus­ing them of at­tempt­ing to un­der­mine the on­go­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process with the Postal Work­ers’ Union.

In­dars­ingh al­so crit­i­cised man­ag­ing di­rec­tor George Alex­is and hu­man re­source man­ag­er Krys­tal Joseph for en­gag­ing with the me­dia on sen­si­tive ne­go­ti­a­tion mat­ters, in­stead of keep­ing dis­cus­sions at the bar­gain­ing ta­ble. He ques­tioned if this was done un­der po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tion and was an at­tempt to un­der­mine the labour move­ment.

How­ev­er, Alex­is de­nied the union’s claims and said the man­age­ment does not get in­volved in the union and mem­bers’ af­fairs.