The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) has been barred from shift­ing its res­i­den­tial fi­bre op­tic com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vice to its re­cent­ly ac­quired sub­sidiary, Am­plia, on Mon­day.

A five-mem­ber pan­el of In­dus­tri­al Court Judges, led by Pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix, yes­ter­day grant­ed the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) an in­junc­tion block­ing the pro­posed move un­til an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence filed by it on Thurs­day evening is de­ter­mined by the court.

In its com­plaint, sim­i­lar to the one filed by the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) in its on­go­ing bid to de­lay the clo­sure of Petrotrin, the union is claim­ing the com­pa­ny failed to prop­er­ly con­sult with it be­fore tak­ing the de­ci­sion, which forms part of the com­pa­ny’s on­go­ing re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise.

The of­fence car­ries a $4,000 fine but the court can al­so or­der the com­pa­ny and union to restart dis­cus­sions on the is­sue.

The union is con­tend­ing that the move would even­tu­al­ly make TSTT work­ers, who were pre­vi­ous­ly work­ing on con­vert­ing TSTT’s cop­per line net­work to fi­bre op­tics, re­dun­dant.

The union claims that un­der the com­pa­ny’s col­lec­tive agree­ment, which gov­erns the terms and con­di­tions of its em­ploy­ees, it is barred from out­sourc­ing work to ex­ter­nal ser­vice providers.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s brief hear­ing, the union’s lawyer Michael Quam­i­na claimed the union was on­ly in­formed of the de­ci­sion when its mem­bers re­ceived let­ters from the com­pa­ny on Sep­tem­ber 25 and that the com­pa­ny has re­fused to re­spond to sev­er­al re­quests to meet to dis­cuss the is­sue.

“With Am­plia now per­form­ing the fi­bre op­tic op­er­a­tions, the work­ers that pre­vi­ous­ly did these op­er­a­tions will no longer have work to do,” Quam­i­na said.

Thomas-Fe­lix ques­tioned the sub­mis­sions, as she point­ed out the com­pa­nies’ close com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship.

“If TSTT has tak­en over a com­pa­ny, can that be con­sid­ered giv­ing out work to peo­ple out­side the com­pa­ny?” Thomas-Fe­lix asked.

Quam­i­na main­tained that while Am­plia is a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary with shared board mem­bers, it is a sep­a­rate le­gal en­ti­ty.

TSTT was un­able to ini­tial­ly re­spond to the sub­mis­sions be­cause it had sent a ju­nior em­ploy­ee to rep­re­sent it at the hear­ing, claim­ing it was on­ly made aware of the le­gal ac­tion around mid­day yes­ter­day.

Thomas-Fe­lix agreed to stand the case down for the em­ploy­ee to re­ceive in­struc­tions from the com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment.

When he re­turned he said the com­pa­ny was op­pos­ing the in­junc­tion, adding TSTT felt the court did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to grant it on an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence com­plaint be­cause of­fences are qua­si-crim­i­nal of­fences which do not at­tract in­junc­tive re­lief.

The sub­mis­sion is ex­act­ly what was raised by Petrotrin’s at­tor­neys in the OW­TU in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion last week. The in­junc­tion, in that case, has been stayed pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the ap­peal, which is card­ed to be heard next Thurs­day.

But Thomas-Fe­lix re­ject­ed the sub­mis­sion, as she ques­tioned whether it was the rea­son why the com­pa­ny did not send its le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

“They did not think they should come here to give the court the dig­ni­ty it de­serves?” Thomas-Fe­lix said.

She not­ed that her staff had re­cent­ly done re­search on the court’s ju­ris­dic­tion for the Petrotrin case and that there was ev­i­dence of mul­ti­ple in­junc­tions be­ing grant­ed for in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fences in the past. Quam­i­na al­so not­ed that the court’s de­ci­sion in the Petrotrin case is yet to be over­turned by the Ap­peal Court.

In grant­i­ng the in­junc­tion, Thomas-Fe­lix set dates for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence in the claim and set the hear­ing date for Oc­to­ber 28.

Car­bon copy of Petrotrin plan - El­der

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) head Clyde El­der ex­pects TSTT to im­me­di­ate­ly ap­peal its in­junc­tion.

Speak­ing mo­ments af­ter the rul­ing at the court’s Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters yes­ter­day evening, El­der said, “This would not sur­prise us at all be­cause what is hap­pen­ing here is a car­bon copy of Petrotrin.”

He al­so claimed they were not sur­prised by the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion not to send le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

“The em­ploy­ers are now seek­ing to chal­lenge what the court has been do­ing for the last 20 years whether or not if it is right.

“Their con­duct, be­hav­iour and their at­ti­tude to­wards unions, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and the court is noth­ing short of ut­ter con­tempt and dis­dain for any­thing that re­sem­bles pro­tec­tion for work­ers,” El­der said.

He al­so claimed the union nev­er sug­gest­ed that the pro­posed move to shift op­er­a­tions would cause im­me­di­ate re­trench­ment of work­ers.

“We nev­er said peo­ple were go­ing to be re­trenched on Mon­day, but we need­ed to stop it from the time it be­gins be­cause af­ter that it will be too late,” El­der said, as he de­scribed the com­plaint and cor­re­spond­ing in­junc­tion as a proac­tive step.

El­der went as far as to sug­gest that Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions in re­struc­tur­ing Petrotrin and TSTT were at­tempts to break the trade union move­ment.

“What is hap­pen­ing in T&T to­day is a Kei­th Christo­pher Row­ley-led PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion hell-bent on de­stroy­ing labour at any cost and they are ably sup­port­ed by the em­ploy­er class. That is a dan­ger­ous set­ting,” El­der said.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day evening, TSTT’s Se­nior Man­ag­er of Pub­lic Re­la­tions and Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Graeme Suite said the de­ci­sion made by the In­dus­tri­al Court was sur­pris­ing.

“The com­pa­ny will take the re­quired next steps to en­sure that TSTT will con­tin­ue to­wards sus­tained prof­itabil­i­ty. TSTT does not out­source its res­i­den­tial fi­bre ser­vices; Am­plia is a 100% whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of TSTT and has al­ways op­er­at­ed as such. TSTT man­ages all of its op­er­a­tions in good faith and will con­tin­ue to do so,” Suite said in the state­ment.

About Am­plia

Am­plia, pre­vi­ous­ly Massy Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, was bought by TSTT for $255 mil­lion in May, last year, while the com­pa­ny was un­der the stew­ard­ship of for­mer chair­man Emile Elias.

At the time, Elias de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion as he claimed that it gave TSTT im­me­di­ate ac­cess to an ad­di­tion 34,000 po­ten­tial cus­tomers in Diego Mar­tin, Port-of-Spain, Trinci­ty, Ari­ma and San Fer­nan­do, where Am­plia had pre­vi­ous­ly in­stalled a fi­bre op­tic net­work.

The com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly has 130 em­ploy­ees.