Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider, TSTT, yes­ter­day signed a three-year col­lec­tive agree­ment with the trade union rep­re­sent­ing its 2,000 ju­nior and se­nior staff that gives the em­ploy­ees a 10 per cent wage in­crease for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2011 to De­cem­ber 2013.

The col­lec­tive agree­ment–which stip­u­lates wage in­creas­es of 2%-3%-5% for the three-year pe­ri­od–will re­sult in the em­ploy­ees shar­ing about $300 mil­lion in back­pay. The com­pa­ny said that it was com­mit­ted ti mak­ing all retroac­tive pay­ments for salaries and al­lowances for the new agree­ment by March 2016.

The ef­fec­tive salary in­crease is like­ly to be more than 10 per cent as a Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) of $1,041 would be con­sol­i­dat­ed to the em­ploy­ees' base salary from Jan­u­ary 2011 and then the salary in­cre­ment would be ap­plied.

The con­sol­i­da­tion of CO­LA, hy­po­thet­i­cal­ly, means a TSTT em­ploy­ee who had a base month­ly salary of $15,000 in De­cem­ber 2010, would see their salary in­crease to:

�2 $16,361.82 in De­cem­ber 2011 by con­sol­i­dat­ing the CO­LA and then adding the 2 per cent in­cre­ment;

�2 $16,852.67 in De­cem­ber 2012 by adding the 3 per cent in­cre­ment and to

�2 $17,695.30 in De­cem­ber 2013 by adding the 5 per cent in­cre­ment.

In ef­fect, the em­ploy­ees salary at the end of the three year pe­ri­od would be 18 per cent high­er than at the be­gin­ning of the pe­ri­od, if the CO­LA is con­sol­i­dat­ed in Year 1.

The agree­ment was signed yes­ter­day by TSTT chief ex­ec­u­tive Ronald Wal­cott and Joseph Re­my, the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union at a con­fer­ence room in the com­pa­ny's down­town Port-of-Spain head of­fice.

The pre­vi­ous col­lec­tive agree­ment for the 2008 to 2010 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od was set­tled when the In­dus­tri­al Court hand­ed down a rul­ing in May 2015, which re­sult­ed in TSTT hav­ing to pay out $450 mil­lion in back­pay to its em­ploy­ees. This means that in less than a year TSTT would have paid out more than $750 mil­lion to its 1,600 ju­nior staff and 416 se­nior staff for retroac­tive in­creas­es for the two col­lec­tive agree­ment pe­ri­ods.

At a press con­fer­ence to an­nounce the set­tle­ment, CWU pres­i­dent John Julien not­ed that the last time TSTT and CWU ar­rived at a set­tle­ment of a col­lec­tive agree­ment with­out any third par­ty in­ter­ven­tion was in the 1990s.

"To­day is a good day as the CWU and TSTT be­come part­ners for the sur­vival of the com­pa­ny," Julien said.

Speak­ing af­ter Julien, new TSTT chair­man Emile Elias picked up on his ref­er­ence to part­ners, say­ing: "I am go­ing to hold them to that word for life be­cause part­ners work to­geth­er to achieve suc­cess."

Elias said the back­drop to the new col­lec­tive agree­ment is that it means a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in costs for TSTT, which has seen flat rev­enues in the last five years.

"That is not a recipe for sur­vival," said Elias.