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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Defeated leadership candidate warns PSA against supporting political parties

by

Otto Carrington
Yesterday
20250314
Nixon Callender, PSA member shows his stained finger after casting his vote on Monday.

Nixon Callender, PSA member shows his stained finger after casting his vote on Monday.

For­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) gen­er­al sec­re­tary and de­feat­ed 2025 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Nixon Cal­len­der has is­sued a warn­ing to mem­bers, con­demn­ing what he de­scribes as an alarm­ing shift to­wards po­lit­i­cal align­ment with­in the union.

In a strong­ly word­ed state­ment yes­ter­day, Cal­len­der ac­cused new­ly elect­ed PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas and her ex­ec­u­tive of be­tray­ing the union’s core mis­sion by open­ly sup­port­ing a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

Cal­len­der said re­cent state­ments from Thomas con­firmed that the PSA was no longer func­tion­ing as an in­de­pen­dent trade union but had be­come a po­lit­i­cal arm of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

He crit­i­cised Thomas’ de­c­la­ra­tion, af­ter she had been con­firmed as the win­ner of the elec­tion on Wednes­day, that her “first or­der of busi­ness” was to re­move the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) from of­fice, ar­gu­ing that such a stance re­de­fines the PSA as a po­lit­i­cal weapon rather than a rep­re­sen­ta­tive body for pub­lic ser­vants.

He de­scribed this as a dan­ger­ous de­vel­op­ment, warn­ing it com­pro­mised the union’s abil­i­ty to fair­ly rep­re­sent work­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly when a dif­fer­ent par­ty is in pow­er.

Cal­len­der em­pha­sised that the PSA was found­ed on prin­ci­ples of neu­tral­i­ty and work­ers’ ad­vo­ca­cy, ne­go­ti­at­ing with the gov­ern­ment of the day rather than at­tempt­ing to over­throw it.

In De­cem­ber last year, out­go­ing PSA leader Leroy Bap­tiste was re­port­ed­ly sched­uled to meet with UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as she sought to as­sem­ble mem­bers of the “Coali­tion of In­ter­ests.”

Yes­ter­day, Cal­len­der al­so point­ed to past in­stances of po­lit­i­cal “en­tan­gle­ment” with­in the PSA, ref­er­enc­ing for­mer pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke, who left the union to pur­sue a po­lit­i­cal ca­reer with the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP).

Cal­len­der warned that the PSA’s cred­i­bil­i­ty is now at risk, po­ten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing its role as a bar­gain­ing agent for work­ers. He urged PSA mem­bers to re­ject what he termed a “dan­ger­ous path” and de­mand the union re­main po­lit­i­cal­ly neu­tral. He al­so called on mem­bers to hold the ex­ec­u­tive ac­count­able and en­sure the union re­mains fo­cused on work­ers’ rights rather than po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns.

“The PSA ex­ists to fight for work­ers’ rights, not to fight elec­tions,” he de­clared.

“If we al­low the PSA to be­come a po­lit­i­cal tool, we will lose every­thing we have fought for.”

Cal­len­der’s warn­ing came amid on­go­ing con­cerns about stalled labour ne­go­ti­a­tions, which he at­trib­uted to the PSA’s politi­ci­sa­tion of is­sues over the past decade. He in­sist­ed pub­lic of­fi­cers must re­claim con­trol of the union and re­store its cred­i­bil­i­ty as an in­de­pen­dent voice.

—Ot­to Car­ring­ton


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