Joshua Sur­tees

A hand­ful of Nalis (Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems) work­ers protest­ed out­side the Na­tion­al Li­brary, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day call­ing for man­age­ment to ho­n­our a sev­en-to-nine per cent pay in­crease agree­ment, dat­ing from 2008-10, which, they say, re­mains un­ful­filled.Around 20 staff mem­bers protest­ed with chants of We want Co­la (cost of liv­ing al­lowance).The tar­gets of their anger were pri­mar­i­ly HR di­rec­tor Car­olyn Aigle and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Lu­cia Phillip.

Af­ter the protest, union rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ray­mond But­ler told the me­dia: "We have had to take to the streets. What has hap­pened is that as of March this year, ne­go­ti­a­tions were com­plet­ed. Up to this date they have not been giv­en any ar­rears. The end of the fi­nan­cial year has gone and up to now they have not paid the work­ers."In re­sponse, Phillip said the union had been in­formed that the out­stand­ing pay­ment for the af­fect­ed work­ers would be paid by the end of next Jan­u­ary.

She was shocked that the protest had tak­en place, say­ing as far as she was con­cerned agree­ment al­ready had been made. She point­ed to the fact that PSA elec­tions were im­mi­nent and But­ler was nom­i­nat­ed and run­ning for pres­i­dent.But­ler al­so com­plained that Nalis di­rec­tors had re­fused au­di­tors' re­quests to see fi­nan­cial records and had not agreed to "meet and treat" with the PSA and af­fect­ed staff mem­bers, num­ber­ing 850.

He sug­gest­ed if there was no res­o­lu­tion by the end of next month they would take Nalis to the In­dus­tri­al Court. He al­so ex­pressed dis­may that Nalis was not be­ing trans­par­ent in its op­er­a­tions.The PSA, he said, had writ­ten to the man­age­ment of Nalis but had re­ceived no re­sponse.Asked if work­ers would sup­port in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, But­ler said they would take ac­tion to the "next lev­el" by end of next month. He said in the first in­stance they would be re­quest­ing an­oth­er meet­ing with man­age­ment.

Among those who took part in the lunchtime protest was li­brary tech­ni­cian Giselle Athanas.Ex­plain­ing the small turnout for the protest (just 20 staff out of 850 across T&T) she said: "There is a fear among staff. There's fear for me too." She has worked at Nalis for sev­en years, she said, and though she re­ceived a mi­nor pay in­crease of an un­stat­ed amount in June, she said there were out­stand­ing pay in­creas­es from 2009-11. She said she did not want to leave Nalis but felt she was un­der­paid for the work she did at the li­brary.

Nalis' side of the sto­ry

In a state­ment, Nalis said:"Nalis re­spects the em­ploy­ees' right to high­light is­sues that af­fect them and to this end a joint con­sul­ta­tive coun­cil (a union/man­age­ment team) was es­tab­lished in April this year with the aim of strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween man­age­ment and staff and cre­at­ing a more em­pow­er­ing work en­vi­ron­ment.

"The is­sues list­ed (1. Pay­ment of Ar­rears, 2. De­tails of the new com­pen­sa­tion Plan/Ces­sa­tion of Co­la Pay­ment, 3. Val­i­da­tion Ex­er­cise/Is­suance of Let­ters of Ap­point­ment) have been placed on the agen­da and con­tin­u­ous up­dates pro­vid­ed at each coun­cil meet­ing."In ad­di­tion, no­tices were sent to all staff in­form­ing them of the ces­sa­tion of the pay­ment of Co­la in keep­ing with the new­ly-ap­proved com­pen­sa­tion pack­age which staff be­gan re­ceiv­ing in June 2013."