Kali­fa Clyne

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union (CWU) has giv­en Gov­ern­ment an ul­ti­ma­tum: en­sure that Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) set­tle out­stand­ing is­sues with work­ers or pre­pare for a great loss at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.The union is al­so warn­ing the pub­lic to pre­pare for ser­vice dis­rup­tions if TSTT fails to re­sume ne­go­ti­a­tions by next week or ad­dress the is­sue of pay­ing work­ers their cor­rect Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (Co­la).

Sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the CWU John Julien yes­ter­day told the me­dia that work­ers were pre­pared to in­ten­si­fy protests if man­age­ment failed to ad­dress is­sues, in­clud­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions out­stand­ing since 2008.Julien was lead­ing work­ers in a protest out­side TSTT House on Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain."We are prob­a­bly the on­ly large or­gan­i­sa­tion that has a col­lec­tive agree­ment not set­tled since 2008," Julien said.

He ap­pealed to the new­ly ap­point­ed ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of hu­man re­sources at TSTT, Har­ry­gob­in Jhinkoo, to work with the union."We are plac­ing every­thing at the foot of the new EVP HR (Jhinkoo). We know that he was placed here by the Gov­ern­ment and we are ap­peal­ing to the Gov­ern­ment. It is bet­ter you set­tle with the union, be­cause TSTT is valu­able to the econ­o­my of this coun­try."

Julien said the union would do what it could to have ne­go­ti­a­tions set­tled be­fore the end of 2013."We are go­ing to step up our ac­tions in or­der to get the ne­go­ti­a­tions re­solved," he said.Julien said yes­ter­day's protest was a sig­nal to the man­age­ment that the union was pre­pared to in­ten­si­fy protests."We are con­sid­er­ing a work to rule. There are a num­ber of health and safe­ty is­sues.

"We are giv­ing the com­pa­ny un­til Wednes­day to re­spond and meet with the union," Julien said.Julien said with­in a few weeks the pub­lic could see a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of ser­vices at the state-owned com­pa­ny.Julien ques­tioned the com­pa­ny spend­ing "ex­trav­a­gant amounts of mon­ey" on lawyers as op­posed to set­tling with work­ers.

Last Thurs­day the union won a court mat­ter re­lat­ing to pay­ment of Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) for ju­nior staff mem­bers. The court ruled that the for­mu­la used to cal­cu­late CO­LA by the com­pa­ny was in­cor­rect.Julien said the com­pa­ny owed work­ers over $100 mil­lion.