Ken Ali

?Q: How does it feel to be elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion?

A: I feel ho­n­oured, be­cause so many work­ers re­posed their trust and con­fi­dence in my mes­sage. They have giv­en me con­trol in the shap­ing of their work life for the next four years. For that, we are ho­n­oured and hum­bled. Some work­ers we nev­er met have trust­ed us.

To what do you at­tribute your suc­cess?

To God and peo­ple! Peo­ple came around and just sup­port­ed me. I must give re­spect to those per­sons.

What makes you a suit­able PSA leader?

I have been pre­pared for this work. I was al­ways out­spo­ken. At church as a young leader in To­ba­go, I spoke to crowds: young peo­ple and even se­nior peo­ple. I had a one-on-one with many per­sons. It ap­peared that God pre­pared me for lead­er­ship. In 1999, I be­came a se­ri­ous prac­ti­tion­er of trade union­ism; I was very much in­volved. Then while in To­ba­go in 2007, I got a call to re­turn to WASA to run for chair­man of that sec­tion in the union elec­tion. Af­ter giv­ing it thought, I de­cid­ed to give it a shot. I got a land­slide vic­to­ry. Lat­er, we set­tled a big agree­ment. It was clear that God was mov­ing with me. When the ex­ec­u­tive start­ed to at­tack me, it ap­peared God was prepar­ing me for pres­i­dent.

I went to court three times and won. There were at­tempts to dis­miss me, but the tri­bunals were nev­er set up. I re­alised it was a di­vine hand. It was fur­ther con­vic­tion that God had pre­pared me for pres­i­dent. Based on my lead­er­ship style, I was able to make peo­ple be­lieve that we could do it. Our cam­paign start­ed with­out mon­ey. Ken, you can­not con­fuse the anoint­ed with ex­pe­ri­ence. David was not a war­rior; he was a shep­herd boy. Go­liath was a war­rior, trained to kill. David had anoint­ing. He had an as­sur­ance of how it would turn out.

You had a long-run­ning bat­tle with the Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus ex­ec­u­tive; do you see your vic­to­ry as a vin­di­ca­tion of your po­si­tion?

Yes, a fi­nal vin­di­ca­tion. Over two years, they did me every sin­gle thing you could do some­one in the trade union move­ment. They ma­ligned my name and at­tempt­ed to de­stroy my ca­reer at WASA. But I kept the faith, not for me, but be­cause of what pub­lic of­fi­cers were suf­fer­ing from–a lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

What are your pri­or­i­ties?

They are many and var­ied. Our prime pri­or­i­ty is to lis­ten to the work­ers. We be­lieve that by lis­ten­ing to the work­ers we would un­der­stand their griev­ances and be able to ad­vise them. That way, we can be­come suc­cess­ful in every­thing. But first, we must lis­ten to them. We want to tell them what we dis­cov­ered and al­low them to make de­ci­sions.

What do you see as the lega­cy of the Bap­tiste-Primus years?

She was a fight­er, but a fight­er who beats a cham­pi­on fight­er is a greater fight­er. When she be­lieves in some­thing, she fights for it. I on­ly wish she was more guid­ed by what the work­ers want­ed her to fight for.

Would she be per­mit­ted to serve as boss of the PSA com­pa­ny, as she had in­di­cat­ed be­fore the elec­tion?

We will talk to her. My lawyers are look­ing at it, based on the rules. As pres­i­dent of the PSA, she was CEO of the union. She was elect­ed based on that role, but I don't think Jen­nifer was elect­ed to head that com­pa­ny. She has ad­mit­ted that she had no busi­ness ex­pe­ri­ence. We would look at it and would want to han­dle it am­i­ca­bly. We do not want any an­i­mos­i­ty; we want peace and heal­ing.

Do you have plans to ex­pand the mem­ber­ship of PSA?

I'm glad you asked. More than 5,000 work­ers want to join the union. I got sev­er­al calls this morn­ing from work­ers, in­di­cat­ing that they want­ed to join the PSA. We are look­ing at an ad­di­tion­al 20,000 mem­bers in the next year or two.

How many mem­bers does the union have at present?

About 13,000. I am not sure. We would have to con­firm the fig­ure.

Would the PSA now play a vig­or­ous role in the labour move­ment?

Cer­tain­ly! We would try to trans­form the union from a club­house to a re­al union, some­thing that could move in­to pro­tect­ing the ba­sic rights of work­ers.

Do you have a game plan?

Yes; we do. It would be re­vealed at a mas­sive ral­ly some­time ear­ly in Jan­u­ary, when all pub­lic of­fi­cers would be in­vit­ed to join, and we would in­ter­act with them. It would be the first meet­ing of its kind in Trinidad and To­ba­go.�There, we would un­veil our plans for a year and lis­ten to our mem­bers.

What do you say about the rest of your ex­ec­u­tive?

My peo­ple are the ones who se­lect­ed me. They are full of con­fi­dence, skill and tenac­i­ty. Now, we have to trans­form that in­to ac­tion.

Some peo­ple are sug­gest­ing that your elec­tion is a vote against the PNM. What do you say to that?

The PSA has al­ways been a po­lit­i­cal tool. It is the most in­flu­en­tial trade union, be­cause of the work­ers it rep­re­sents. We rep­re­sent work­ers in key gov­ern­ment min­istries and de­part­ments. I have no is­sues with the Prime Min­is­ter. I think he would have done his good for the coun­try.�He has poli­cies that I ob­ject to, while there are oth­ers I laud. I hope we would talk from time to time. I hope we would get re­sults.�I am on no war path with the Prime Min­is­ter, but on a path of en­sur­ing that mem­bers' busi­ness comes first. There would be no pol­i­tics in the run­ning of the union.

When do you oc­cu­py the pres­i­dent's chair? Do you have to be sworn in?

I am the pres­i­dent. There is no swear­ing-in. Un­der the union's rules, I have to take an oath.

Have you spo­ken to (de­feat­ed pres­i­den­tial can­di­date) Stephen Thomas?

I have spo­ken to him. He can't be too hap­py at the elec­tion re­sults, since he was a se­nior of­fi­cer of the union for 12 years. We have to de­cide how to in­volve him and utilise his ser­vices. We are not op­posed to him as a per­son. We al­so have to trans­fer notes from the old to the new regime.