The Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (FI­TUN) is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment, and the se­nior man­age­ment at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), to sit down with the work­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive union—the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU)—and work out a way to save the tele­coms com­pa­ny.

FI­TUN pres­i­dent, Joseph Re­my, in a state­ment is­sued to­day, said FI­TUN was ex­press­ing “strong sol­i­dar­i­ty” with the CWU and TSTT work­ers, as they face an­oth­er po­ten­tial threat to the com­pa­ny’s well-be­ing and the spec­tre of re­trench­ment looms over­head.

The FI­TUN leader ex­pressed con­cern that TSTT ex­ec­u­tives seem bent on a path—sim­i­lar to oth­er oc­ca­sions in the past—that would jeop­ar­dise the sol­ven­cy of the com­pa­ny, and which would have the ef­fect of threat­en­ing work­ers jobs, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment is­sued by FI­TUN…

The Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions, FI­TUN, would like to ex­press its Strong Sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union, CWU, and by ex­ten­sion the work­ers at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go, TSTT, who are cur­rent­ly fac­ing an­oth­er veiled threat on their Job Se­cu­ri­ty and liveli­hood.

We strong­ly con­demn the Gov­ern­ment, the Share­hold­ers of TSTT, the Board of Di­rec­tors and the Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment for the cal­lous and cav­a­lier man­ner that they are treat­ing with the fu­ture liveli­hood of the loy­al TSTT em­ploy­ees, who are al­so cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Over the years, we have wit­nessed an in­ept lead­er­ship at TSTT who floun­dered gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ties for the com­pa­ny to be the pre­ferred Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Provider of Choice in the lo­cal mar­ket. Suc­ces­sive Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cers, CEO, ably sup­port­ed by the Board of Di­rec­tors and the share­hold­ers, would have pur­sued quite ques­tion­able and reck­less strate­gic ini­tia­tives that would have on­ly re­sult­ed in Job Cuts at the Com­pa­ny and the po­si­tion­ing of the Com­pa­ny for ac­qui­si­tion by preda­tor pri­vate sec­tor in­ter­ests with po­lit­i­cal ties to the Gov­ern­ment. We re­call the failed Fiber to the Home Project, FT­TH, which had the po­ten­tial to po­si­tion TSTT as the pre­mier Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions So­lu­tions Provider, but which crashed due to wan­ton cor­rup­tion and nepo­tism. We al­so re­call the ques­tion­able ac­qui­si­tion of Am­plia by the then Emile Elias led Board which brought no no­tice­able val­ue add to the op­er­a­tions of TSTT. All that this did was to re-in­tro­duce the Ca­ble &Wire­less op­er­a­tive, Lisa Agard as the CEO.

These past ac­tions and the cur­rent di­rec­tion be­ing pur­sued by the Com­pa­ny led by Lisa Agard, are clear­ly part of the over­all plot to dec­i­mate the Work­ers Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Trade Union, the CWU, de­val­ue the val­ue of the share­hold­ing of the Com­pa­ny and set the plat­form for an ac­qui­si­tion by their par­ty fi­nanciers.

We de­mand that the Gov­ern­ment, the Share­hold­ers and the Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment, with­draw this cur­rent Plan and en­gage the Recog­nised Ma­jor­i­ty Union, the CWU, in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions with the ex­pressed ob­jec­tive of de­vel­op­ing strate­gies to repo­si­tion TSTT as the pre­ferred provider of choice in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We ve­he­ment­ly con­demn this ac­tion that is be­ing pur­sued by TSTT and we de­mand that the Gov­ern­ment changes its pol­i­cy po­si­tion with re­spect to TSTT and di­rect that there must be NO RE­TRENCH­MENT at TSTT.