Derek Achong

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an's 2012 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day has been met with mixed re­views by trade union lead­ers.

BIG­WU:Bankers, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union(BIG­WU) pres­i­dent Vin­cent Cabr­era says his union's main con­cern in the bud­get is the pro­posed sale of shares in state owned First Cit­i­zens.Cabr­era, who de­scribed the bank as one of the na­tion's most prof­itable state en­ter­pris­es, ex­pressed his con­cerns in a tele­phone in­ter­view.Cabr­era said: "Dook­er­an has be­gan to tam­per with the sale of our na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny.""He (Dook­er­an) is test­ing the ground to see what kind of re­ac­tion there would be from the pub­lic, with the hope of an even larg­er di­vest­ment in the fu­ture.""We (BIG­WU) re­ject his frail eco­nom­ic ar­gu­ments for be­gin­ning the di­vest­ment of shares at that in­dige­nous in­sti­tu­tion," Cabr­era added.

In his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day at Tow­er D, Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, Dook­er­an an­nounced the sale as part of the Gov­ern­ment's plans for Cap­i­tal Mar­ket De­vel­op­ment.Dook­er­an said: "It will as­sist the FCB in widen­ing its cap­i­tal base and fa­cil­i­tate its ex­pan­sion pro­gramme in which it is cur­rent­ly en­gaged."Dook­er­an not­ed that this would not af­fect the Gov­ern­ment's own­er­ship of the bank.Cabr­era al­so ex­pressed con­cerns over the pro­posed merg­er of the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny and Home Mort­gage Bank, which was al­so cit­ed by Dook­er­an as part of the Gov­ern­ment's plans for the de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­ket."Dook­er­an's pro­pos­al to merge the TTMF with an­oth­er le­gal en­ti­ty will cause the trade union to lose its recog­ni­tion sta­tus," Cabr­era said."The over 100 work­ers at TTMF will lose the pro­tec­tion of a trade union (BIG­WU) and they (the work­ers) will al­so lose the ben­e­fits of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and the ben­e­fits of their col­lec­tive agree­ment.""In ad­di­tion many work­ers will be placed on the bread­line with this ill-con­ceived merg­er and in­stead of cre­at­ing jobs, jobs will dis­ap­pear," Cabr­era said.

CWU:Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my al­so ex­pressed a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment as Cabr­era on the pro­posed sale of shares in First Cit­i­zens.Re­my said: "The di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of a suc­cess­ful and prof­itable in­sti­tu­tion such as the FCB is a sig­nal of a gov­ern­ment yard sale.""My pre­lim­i­nary ob­ser­va­tion of the bud­get is that it is very flow­ery," Re­my said.Re­my ques­tioned the im­pact of large projects an­nounced by the Gov­ern­ment on the na­tion's labour force."We (the trade unions) are yet to see what mea­sures have been put in place so that work­ers are prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed," Re­my said.Re­my said one area of con­cern for his union which rep­re­sent­ed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions work­ers was the an­nounce­ment of a for­eign in­vestor in the con­struc­tion of mod­ern da­ta cen­tres across T&T."The sec­tion of the bud­get deal­ing with In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nol­o­gy was very vague. We (union) are yet to see the im­pact of this on Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vice of T&T (TSTT) and its em­ploy­ees," Re­my said.

Natuc and SWW­TU:Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (Natuc) pres­i­dent Michael Anisette says he is with Gov­ern­ment's plans to de­vel­op the mar­itime in­dus­try in T&T.Anisette said: "Natuc and the SWW­TU (Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union) have been ap­peal­ing to the gov­ern­ment for a long time to de­vel­op the ship re­pair and build­ing in­dus­try in T&T.""We (SWW­TU) are hop­ing that the gov­ern­ment makes this process a tri­par­tite one in­clud­ing labour and busi­ness part­ners," Anisette said.Anisette al­so ap­pealed to the gov­ern­ment to in­volve work­ers in the es­tab­lish­ing of the in­dus­try and in pro­vid­ing em­ploy­ment and en­tre­pre­neur op­por­tu­ni­ties.