Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Trinidad Ltd has told the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) it has no im­me­di­ate plans to re­duce its work­force in T&T.The com­pa­ny, in a state­ment in re­sponse to the union's con­cerns about its pro­posed merg­er with Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC), said the al­liance would be ben­e­fi­cial to Colum­bus em­ploy­ees and em­ploy­ment in gen­er­al.

Com­ment­ing on the union's con­cerns about the 49 per cent stake CWC has in TSTT, Colum­bus said CWC has in­di­cat­ed its will­ing­ness to "neu­tralise its share­hold­ing, plac­ing it in a po­si­tion in which it can­not in­flu­ence the com­pa­ny."The com­pa­ny fur­ther stat­ed that it had in­creased its staff com­ple­ment by 300 over the past year, and cur­rent­ly em­ployed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 900 peo­ple in Trinidad alone.

"We cur­rent­ly have over 100 va­can­cies that we are seek­ing to fill; we have al­so ap­plied for the third mo­bile li­cense and if suc­cess­ful, we es­ti­mate that our em­ploy­ee base will in­crease by an ad­di­tion­al 200 per­son­nel," Colum­bus said.

"Work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are prepar­ing to com­mence con­struc­tion of a Tier III Da­ta Cen­tre in Tamana In­Tech Park which, when com­plet­ed, will house 20 new Colum­bus em­ploy­ees. We plan to launch new prod­ucts and ser­vices in ear­ly 2015, for which we will re­quire ad­di­tion­al staff."

The com­pa­ny said good em­ploy­ee re­la­tions was at the heart of its op­er­a­tions and this will con­tin­ue with the new en­ti­ty cre­at­ed out of the CWC/Colum­bus merg­er with a new lead­er­ship team and a new cul­ture, "which will put our cus­tomers at the heart of the com­pa­ny's busi­ness struc­ture, a prac­tice very much in­cul­cat­ed in the cur­rent Colum­bus way."

The com­pa­ny as­sured: "The im­por­tance of Colum­bus' val­ues as it re­lates to em­ploy­ee re­ten­tion, job safe­ty and job sta­bil­i­ty will still be at the fore­front of our op­er­a­tions.

"We em­pha­sise the words of Phil Bent­ley, CWC's CEO who stat­ed in a re­lease on Fri­day last that the new com­pa­ny formed from the merg­er of CWC/Colum­bus will cre­ate more than 500 jobs by 2019 through growth in its ser­vices and by re­view­ing cur­rent out­sourc­ing arrange­ments. "We will en­hance the qual­i­ty of our cus­tomers' ex­pe­ri­ence, as we in­vest in jobs clos­er to our Caribbean cus­tomers," added Bent­ley.

"Colum­bus recog­nis­es that our in­no­v­a­tive­ness, re­spon­sive­ness and cus­tomer ser­vice qual­i­ty will be para­mount to our suc­cess and this is root­ed in the sat­is­fac­tion and pride of our em­ploy­ees. We are a pro­gres­sive com­pa­ny that puts the in­ter­ests of em­ploy­ees first, and we are ex­cit­ed that a com­bined CWC/Colum­bus will share these same val­ues."

Colum­bus said it planned to work with its union part­ners through­out the re­gion to cre­ate a pro­duc­tive and high per­for­mance work­force to en­sure op­por­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate em­ploy­ment were re­alised.The CWU has been ap­peal­ing to Cari­com gov­ern­ments to in­ter­vene to stop the pro­posed CWC?Colum­bus merg­er.

To high­light its strong op­po­si­tion to the deal, the union staged a protest demon­stra­tion out the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, venue of a meet­ing called by the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union last week to dis­cuss the planned merg­er.

The union has al­so asked the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T not to ap­prove the merg­er.In ear­ly No­vem­ber, CWC reached a con­di­tion­al agree­ment to ac­quire Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al Inc for an es­ti­mat­ed US$3.025 bil­lion. CWC share­hold­ers vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly in favour of the merg­er ear­li­er this month and ap­proval of the pro­posed deal is cur­rent­ly be­ing sought from telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­la­tors across the re­gion.