Labour lead­ers are ex­pect­ed march through the streets of Port-of-Spain on Fri­day, as they pre­pare to protest against the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued four per cent of­fer to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

The march will al­so be in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) work­ers, with the com­pa­ny sched­uled to un­der­go re­struc­tur­ing.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Pub­lic Ser­vices’ As­so­ci­a­tion build­ing in Port-of-Spain, the three union fed­er­a­tions joined un­der one ban­ner “Unite to Fight.”

Joint Trade Union Move­ment pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get said, “The two per cent was dis­re­spect­ful, com­ing and telling us that is the fi­nal of­fer. Four per cent is even more dis­re­spect­ful and to­day as we pre­pare for Fri­day, we re­ject out­right the dis­re­spect­ful of­fer of that four per cent and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer po­si­tion. When this fight is over, one set of peo­ple will re­main stand­ing and it can­not be the Peo­ple Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), it has to be the trade union move­ment and law-abid­ing work­ing-class per­sons.”

Most trade unions are cur­rent­ly in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and the Gov­ern­ment has stat­ed that the fi­nal of­fer is four per cent.

The unions are ex­pect­ed to as­sem­ble on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port-of-Spain.

This will be an­oth­er protest by the unions, they hav­ing al­so staged one in May. The unions claimed over 10,000 work­ers come out to take part in the May event and on Fri­day they ex­pect to see that num­ber in­crease.

PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste added, “We are here to fight that and to bring a stop to the ex­ploita­tion of work­ers and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of in­ci­dent work in this coun­try. We are here to en­sure that the at­tack on or­gan­ised labour comes to an end, that is what the re­struc­tur­ing out­come is. When they say re­struc­ture, they re­name a com­pa­ny au­to­mat­i­cal­ly with no union rep­re­sen­ta­tion be­cause with union rep­re­sen­ta­tion it means bet­ter jobs and bet­ter terms and con­di­tions.”

He added, “Mem­bers, it is time for us to open our eyes and see that this Gov­ern­ment is en­gag­ing in the most frontal at­tack on the trade union move­ment since our ex­is­tence in this coun­try and we have to stand up and bring an end to that.”

The three labour unions par­tak­ing in the march on Fri­day are the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre, Joint Trade Union Move­ment and Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions.

＿(Re­port­ing by Ot­to Car­ring­ton)