GEISHA ALON­ZO

The pri­vate sec­tor was not af­fect­ed by calls from var­i­ous trade union lead­ers to par­tic­i­pate in the day of “rest and re­flec­tion” yes­ter­day, with busi­ness­es re­port­ing that staff turned out for work as nor­mal.

In a joint state­ment, the T&T Cham­ber, Am­ChamTT, En­er­gy Cham­ber and the TTMA said a com­pre­hen­sive sur­vey showed that 88 per cent of their mem­bers were not af­fect­ed, 10 per cent re­port­ed a mi­nor im­pact and on­ly two per cent ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a ma­jor ef­fect from the protest ac­tion.

They thanked work­ers for ig­nor­ing “the ir­re­spon­si­ble calls for a na­tion­al strike and for their con­tin­ued dili­gence and hard work.”

The cham­bers said: “This pat­tern was sim­i­lar across sec­tors and for both unionised and non-unionised com­pa­nies. The pat­tern was the same for both state-owned and pri­vate com­pa­nies.”

A mi­nor im­pact re­port­ed an ab­sen­teeism of four per cent, the re­lease added

TTMA pres­i­dent Christo­pher Al­cazar said: “Our mem­ber­ship’s feed­back in­di­cat­ed that in most in­stances the turnout was noth­ing out of the or­di­nary in all ar­eas of op­er­a­tions.”

He said work­ers had shown “ma­tu­ri­ty and dis­ci­pline” and he praised them for their com­mit­ment to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the greater good.