The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union has been as­sured that TSTT will not be closed down, but they are still wary of se­ri­ous changes which may af­fect the work­force at the State own telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions op­er­a­tor.

The union was al­so giv­en the as­sur­ance that the dis­missed work­ers will re­ceive their sev­er­ance at that end of this month.

Pres­i­dent of the union, Clyde El­der and oth­er of­fi­cials of the union met with Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Robert Le Hunte and the min­istry’s of­fice at One Alexan­dra Place in St Clair.

Af­ter a three-hour meet­ing, which fo­cused on the re­cent re­trench­ment of work­ers, El­der said the agreed that the con­tin­ued sur­vival of TSTT was im­por­tant.

How­ev­er, they dis­agreed at the method used by the com­pa­ny so far.

“The min­is­ter ba­si­cal­ly told us that he is in sup­port of the com­pa­ny’s plan to save 1300 jobs, he is in sup­port of the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness mod­el,” said El­der.

He added: “We told him that we are still against the process that was used by the com­pa­ny. We, in fact, spent a lot of time fo­cus­ing on the process that TSTT adopt­ed. What he said to us was that from his stand­point he was more at­tuned to the pol­i­cy and the phi­los­o­phy than the process it­self.”

How­ev­er, the union raised an eye­brow when the min­is­ter ad­mit­ted he was a fan of the Petrotrin mod­el.

“He did not hear and he does not know that of any ru­mour that TSTT will not be in ex­is­tence af­ter March 2019 and in fact, his po­si­tion is that he likes the Petrotrin mod­el and if that mod­el serves or helps TSTT to be prof­itable then he doesn’t see what is wrong with that,” said El­der af­ter the meet­ing.

Yes­ter­day, was the union’s first-ever meet­ing with Le Hunte.

Last year, 503 peo­ple were re­trenched by TSTT, prompt­ing the union to en­gage in con­cil­i­a­tion talks with the Min­istry of Labour.

Those talks broke down and the union has tak­en the mat­ter to the In­dus­tri­al Court.

The union al­so ex­pressed con­cerns over out­stand­ing sev­er­ance pack­ages for the re­trenched work­ers as they had heard sug­ges­tions that those pay­ments would not be made as promised by the end of the month.

“What he said to us is that he can go on record as say­ing that what­ev­er has to be paid work­ers in ac­cor­dance to the law that by the end of this month they will get it. So he has com­mit­ted to en­sure that the monies we heard can­not be paid, will be paid,” El­der told re­porters af­ter the meet­ing.