Pe­ter D Nep­tune

Dr Lenny Saith threw in the tow­el as the Prime Min­is­ter's ap­point­ed me­di­a­tor on the long­stand­ing in­dus­tri­al im­passe be­tween the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of (TSTT) and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) yes­ter­day. He said the gap be­tween the po­si­tions of the two par­ties could not be re­solved. Saith, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, said both par­ties made a se­ri­ous com­mit­ment to bridge the gap by pro­vid­ing in­no­v­a­tive pro­pos­als and com­pro­mis­es, but the key is­sues of salaries and al­lowances for 2006-2007 could not be rec­on­ciled.

"The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union's ini­tial pro­pos­al would cost the com­pa­ny $240 mil­lion in back pay, and we were able to bring this down to $190 mil­lion since dis­cus­sions start­ed last Thurs­day. But af­ter mak­ing com­pro­mis­es, the com­pa­ny's best counter of­fer could on­ly reach as high as $140 mil­lion–up from their ini­tial of­fer of $112 mil­lion. "That is a $50 mil­lion gap that can­not be re­solved, even if we con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions," Saith said. Saith was speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence that was held yes­ter­day at the Er­ic Williams Fi­nance Build­ing, In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

He said the talks were on­ly able to deal with five of the key sev­en is­sues, which in­clude: pen­sion arrange­ments, ju­nior staff com­mu­ni­ca­tion ben­e­fit, em­ploy­ee share own­er­ship plan, the cost of liv­ing al­lowances and the sus­pen­sion of 72 em­ploy­ees in­volved in an at­tempt to de­liv­er a pe­ti­tion to TSTT man­age­ment at TSTT House, Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain, on Ju­ly 7. He said that de­spite the Gov­ern­ment own­ing 51 per cent of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider, Gov­ern­ment was not in a po­si­tion to force the hand of ei­ther par­ty.

The man­age­ment com­mit­tee will have a strate­gic plan for de­vel­op­ing the com­pa­ny and the com­mit­tee would know the re­sources it will need to be com­pet­i­tive. He said apart from the prime min­is­ter be­ing re­spon­sive to the re­quest by the CWU, he said Gov­ern­ment felt it had an oblig­a­tion to do its part to fa­cil­i­tate the ne­go­ti­a­tions be­cause of the im­por­tant role telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions is ex­pect­ed to play in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and achiev­ing Gov­ern­ment's 2020 vi­sion.

Com­pet­ing at low cost

"The ques­tion of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy is very im­por­tant to the coun­try, and our com­pet­i­tive­ness de­pends on the ca­pa­bil­i­ties and low cost of our com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems. "ICT im­pacts on man­u­fac­tur­ing, in­vest­ment, ed­u­ca­tion, so­cial ser­vices, train­ing and there­fore the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem must be ef­fi­cient, cost ef­fec­tive and re­li­able or it will not be able to de­liv­er the ser­vices we need. We al­so feel that every­one should have ac­cess to com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy," Saith said.

"You must re­mem­ber that TSTT is not on­ly com­pet­ing with Dig­i­cel or Flow, but with the rest of the world for in­vest­ment and jobs to come to our coun­try. So in this re­gard, I am very dis­ap­point­ed that we could not have come to a speedy res­o­lu­tion to this im­passe," Saith said.