The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) said while the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) has set con­di­tions for its ap­proval of the pro­posed merg­er of Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC) and Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al, it has left "the back door wide open" for the trans­ac­tion to be suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed.

In a lengthy state­ment yes­ter­day, CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joseph Re­my said while on the sur­face TATT ap­peared to re­ject the ac­qui­si­tion, care­ful pe­rusal of the mat­ter has left the union with se­ri­ous con­cerns and unan­swered ques­tions. He said the reg­u­la­to­ry body's po­si­tion is sim­i­lar to the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment's ap­proach of set­ting con­di­tions for ap­proval.

"They have giv­en sanc­tion to the de­lib­er­ate ef­forts by Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions over the years to stymie the ad­vance­ment and pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment of TSTT," he said.

"They have ef­fec­tive­ly sig­naled their in­tent to see Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­tin­ue on their path of de­struc­tion of TSTT, all be­cause TSTT has a recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union–the CWU–that they can­not manupu­late and con­trol. That is the main rea­son that Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions wants to ac­quire Columbis, so they can en­ter the mar­ket with the same prod­uct of­fer­ings as TSTT but with a non-unionised work­force that they can ma­nip­u­late and ex­ploit all in their quest for ob­scene prof­its."

Re­my said if the merg­er takes place there will be a drop in em­ploy­ment lev­els in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor.

In its first ma­jor state­ment on the pro­posed CWC-Colum­bus merg­er, TATT on Thurs­day sug­gest­ed that CWC sus­pend its share­hold­er rights with re­gard to its stake in ma­jor­i­ty state-owned TSTT, among oth­er con­di­tions. CWC con­trols 49 per cent of shares in TSTT while the re­main­ing 51 per cent is con­trolled by Gov­ern­n­ment through its in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny, Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (NEL).

CWC's pre­de­ces­sor, Ca­ble and Wire­less, got its stake on the lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny fol­low­ing the 1991 merg­er of the T&T Tele­phone Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Tel­co) and Trinidad and To­ba­go Ex­ter­nal Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Tex­tel) to cre­ate TSTT.

CWC has in­di­cat­ed its will­ing­ness dis­pose of its shares in TSTT and is pre­pared to work with NEL for a fair dis­pos­al.

"CWC ful­ly recog­nised that our share­hold­ing in TSTT would need to be neu­tralised ei­ther by a blind trust or by dis­pos­al of our shares, mat­ters that were pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered by the com­pa­ny. We look for­ward to work­ing with the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er, NEL, to agree a fair process for dis­pos­al, as em­bod­ied in our ex­ist­ing Share­hold­er Agree­ment, and are sup­port­ive of a dis­pos­al process that per­mits an or­der­ly sale to be con­clud­ed in a pe­ri­od of not more than 18 months," the com­pa­ny said in a let­ter to TATT.

Con­cerns have been ex­pressed that CWC's pro­posed US$3 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion Colum­bus. a re­gion­al ca­ble provider, could lead to a de­cline in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pe­ti­tion across the Caribbean. CWC an­nounced in ear­ly No­vem­ber that its board had agreed on terms to pur­chase 100 per cent of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al In­cr for US$1.85 bil­lion. CWC al­so plans to as­sume Colum­bus' US$1.17 bil­lion in net debt.

The ac­qui­si­tion would be fi­nance through the pay­ment of US$707.5 mil­lion in cash and the is­sue of 1.55 bil­lion new or­di­nary CWC shares to Colum­bus' three ma­jor share­hold­ers – John Rise­ly, John Mal­one and Bren­dan Pad­dick – worth US$1.14 bil­lion. If the trans­ac­tion is ap­proved, the three main Colum­bus share­hold­ers will own about 36 per cent of CWC and col­lec­tive­ly will be the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider's largest share­hold­ers.

The pro­posed trans­ac­tion will bring to­geth­er CWC, which has 5.7 mil­lion mo­bile, fixed line and In­ter­net cus­tomers in Pana­ma, the Caribbean and Sey­chelles, with the 700,000 res­i­den­tial sub­scribers of Colum­bus in the Caribbean, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the An­dean re­gion.

Com­ple­tion of the trans­ac­tion is con­di­tion­al on reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval in Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and T&T. Ja­maica has al­ready ap­proved the merg­er.