Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Mem­bers of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union are de­mand­ing an­swers af­ter a pub­lic no­tice was pub­lished last week an­nounc­ing that Michael An­nisette is no longer pres­i­dent gen­er­al. Her­bert Con­stan­tine was named as the new head of the union.

In re­sponse to the news, branch and or­di­nary mem­bers con­verged on the union hall in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day seek­ing an­swers about the no­tice.

An SWW­TU of­fi­cial said An­nisette had passed the re­tire­ment age of 60 and the union’s ex­ec­u­tive act­ed with­in the con­sti­tu­tion to in­stall the new pres­i­dent gen­er­al.

How­ev­er, rank-and-file union mem­bers are ques­tion­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy of the move as there was no con­fer­ence of del­e­gates or ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions.

Derek Thomp­son, Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer in SWW­TU’s An­gos­tu­ra Branch said, “We have no le­git­i­mate in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to any chang­ing of the guards, which is the ex­ec­u­tive.

“We have no in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to Com­rade Michael An­nisette be­ing re­moved as the pres­i­dent gen­er­al of SWW­TU. As far as this group of peo­ple here, we still stand that even if some­thing is to change in the SWW­TU, it must be done by the Con­sti­tu­tion and it must be fair.”

This is not the first time the fill­ing of the union’s top po­si­tion has come un­der scruti­ny. In 2011, An­nisette was chal­lenged by some mem­bers when he was re-elect­ed to the po­si­tion.

Thomp­son said, “We are con­cerned about the par­tic­u­lar changes with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, such as the fi­nance of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, who are the sig­na­to­ries and the chang­ing of the sig­na­to­ries in the banks, which we are ques­tion­ing and which is un­der ques­tion and of great con­cern to all the mem­ber­ship. We are al­so not go­ing to tol­er­ate any trade union coup.”

An­tho­ny Alex­is, chair­man of the Sea­far­ers Branch, de­scribed the no­tice as an at­tack on the union.

“We’re go­ing to put a stop to that, they at­tack us and we are go­ing to be on the of­fen­sive now,” he said.

“You know in war, some­times one might at­tack you, with­out you know­ing. We will launch our counter-of­fen­sive to make sure every­thing comes back in its prop­er per­spec­tive.

“We have enough branch­es that are in sup­port of this ven­ture, and we’re go­ing to call for a con­fer­ence of del­e­gates, where peo­ple will be elect­ed le­git­i­mate­ly.”

An­nisette de­clined to com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day ex­cept to de­ny claims of a coup in the union. He had served on the SWW­TU ex­ec­u­tive for more than a decade. He re­mains as head of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre.