?The Na­tion­al Work­ers' Union (NWU) has called for the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) to dis­miss sen­a­tor Michael An­nisette from his post as pres­i­dent of the um­brel­la union body.

"The NWU is not a mem­ber of NATUC, but as a com­po­nent part of the labour move­ment, we view with great anger and deep dis­gust the po­si­tion adopt­ed by sen­a­tor An­nisette against the cam­paign launched by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) to de­fend its mem­bers at the Board of In­land Rev­enue and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise De­part­ment," NWU said in a re­lease yes­ter­day. NWU said the move by Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd will re­sult in the re­trench­ment of near­ly 2,000 work­ers at the Board of In­land Rev­enue and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise De­part­ment, and will ef­fec­tive­ly de-recog­nise the PSA and the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) as the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty unions for these work­ers.

"Yet sen­a­tor An­nisette goes on record as de­fend­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of this so-called spe­cial pur­pose State en­ter­prise, which will clear the way for the same ap­proach to be adopt­ed at the Li­cens­ing De­part­ment, the High­ways and Drainage Di­vi­sions of the Min­istry of Works, as well as lo­cal gov­ern­ment as the gov­ern­ment moves to emas­cu­late the pub­lic ser­vice, with dis­as­trous con­se­quences for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers as to their job se­cu­ri­ty and loss of union rep­re­sen­ta­tion," read the state­ment. In de­fend­ing the TTRA, An­nisette, on March 3, said: "No­body can be against the chang­ing and up­grad­ing of a State in­sti­tu­tion. We need to mod­ernise the sys­tem if we are to at­tain First World sta­tus."

An­nisette an­ti-work­er?

"Not on­ly does An­nisette de­fend the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTRA, but he dis­par­ages the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of PSA mem­bers by their lead­er­ship in de­fence of their job se­cu­ri­ty. "Sen­a­tor An­nisette is clear­ly an avid sup­port­er of the an­ti-work­ing class, neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic poli­cies of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment and can be count­ed up­on to put the in­ter­ests of the neo-colo­nial regime above those of the very work­ing-class, whose in­ter­ests he is sup­posed to de­fend as pres­i­dent of NATUC." The NWU said the labour move­ment in T&T can no longer af­ford to tol­er­ate this cha­rade and the first du­ty of the trade union move­ment is to de­fend, pro­tect and ad­vance the in­ter­ests of its mem­bers.