Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ozzi War­wick is con­tin­u­ing their con­dem­na­tion of the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go for us­ing mil­i­tary per­son­nel at the Port of Port-of-Spain while work­ers protest­ed.

His re­sponse comes af­ter the chair­man, re­tired Colonel Lyle Alexan­der, on Fri­day said the mat­ter was “al­ready closed.”

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Alexan­der said as work­ers protest­ed sev­er­al is­sues, which led to them walk­ing off the job on Oc­to­ber 3, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) was called in to help.

TTDF mem­bers as­sist­ed in of­fload­ing car­go.

But War­wick said this was not sup­posed to hap­pen at all.

“This is­sue for us in the trade union move­ment is a very, very se­ri­ous one, and it doesn’t mat­ter whether the use of the mil­i­tary was for one hour, one day, one week, one year, to do one task or an­oth­er. The point is that the use of mil­i­tary per­son­nel shows a clear ero­sion of civ­il lib­er­ties,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to War­wick, PATT’s use of TTDF mem­bers to re­place work­ers un­der­mines their rights and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions. He added that even worse, it sup­press­es le­git­i­mate labour dis­putes and col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing.

“At the end of the day, what hap­pened on the port was the un­war­rant­ed use of the co­er­cive arm of the State against or­di­nary work­ers who were sim­ply fight­ing for their rights, and that must nev­er be sup­port­ed,” he said.

The trade union­ist de­scribed it as an ex­treme abuse of State pow­er that must not be al­lowed to take root in the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. He added that to­day it could be port work­ers and to­mor­row it could be any oth­er cit­i­zen.

On Sun­day, both the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) and the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) con­demned what they called Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­fer­ence and called for in­ter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty.

In a press re­lease, NATUC said gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette high­light­ed the is­sues port work­ers face at the 46th Con­gress of the In­ter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion in Mo­roc­co.

These in­clud­ed the use of mil­i­tary per­son­nel, health and safe­ty con­cerns, and the vi­o­la­tion of the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments.

In re­sponse, the port chair­man said sol­diers from the TTDF were on­ly used for one day. Alexan­der added that man­age­ment and the union were cur­rent­ly in dis­cus­sions.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the port yes­ter­day morn­ing, it was busi­ness as usu­al.