Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Now that the Privy Coun­cil has giv­en the green light for the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), one of the con­cerns raised is who will be the recog­nised union to rep­re­sent the work­ers.

The TTRA will be an amal­ga­ma­tion of the Board of In­land Rev­enue and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and will im­pact some 2,175 work­ers, ac­cord­ing Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste.

Bap­tiste has been clam­our­ing for an­swers from Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert, about the terms and con­di­tions the work­ers who de­cide to switch to the TTRA will be sub­ject­ed to. He said there were ques­tions that need an­swers be­fore the work­ers took the leap to join the TTRA and be with­out the prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Bap­tiste likened the move to “vir­tu­al slav­ery,” where he said work­ers were be­ing made to “just do what the boss­es say.”

He said, “Part and par­cel of the Gov­ern­ment ob­jec­tive in vir­tu­al­ly every re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise they have em­barked up­on is to dis­man­tle bar­gain­ing units, there­fore cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where there are non-unionised work­ers. And the same is true of TTRA, so the work­ers who en­ter there will not have the right to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing.”

Bap­tiste’s claim of an en­vi­ron­ment of non-unionised work­ers was sup­port­ed by in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions spe­cial­ist Court­ney Mc Nish, who ref­er­enced the reshuf­fling of Petrotrin to Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, where the work­ers once rep­re­sent­ed by the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) were now un­rep­re­sent­ed.

He added, how­ev­er, that there were al­so ex­am­ples of re­struc­tur­ing where the work­ers were not im­pact­ed and the unions re­mained. One of these in­clud­ed the shift of the Health Min­istry work­ers to the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, where the work­ers are still rep­re­sent­ed by the PSA.

Mc Nish said this is not the first time some­thing of this na­ture has hap­pened in the coun­try and raised the on­go­ing amal­ga­ma­tion of State-run trade or­gan­i­sa­tions, Ex­porTT, In­vesTT and Cre­ativeTT to form the Trinidad and To­ba­go Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency (TTI­PA).

Mean­while, for­mer PSA pres­i­dent and for­mer min­is­ter of labour Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus said the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive should fo­cus on meet­ing with the CPO to get more time for work­ers to in­di­cate their po­si­tions re­gard­ing the TTRA.

The work­ers had up to Ju­ly 31 to ei­ther join the TTRA, ac­cept vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages or be trans­ferred to an­oth­er state agency.

Last month, act­ing CPO Wendy Bar­ton met with Bap­tiste vir­tu­al­ly to dis­cuss the is­sue, but the meet­ing end­ed with the CPO of­fice need­ing ques­tions an­swered from the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia then Din­di­al said both par­ties, as well as the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion De­part­ment, are now wait­ing on da­ta from the Min­istry of Fi­nance to both ad­vance and ad­dress is­sues that PSA’s mem­ber­ship had with the move.

Calls and mes­sages to both Din­di­al and Im­bert yes­ter­day went unan­swered.

In Ju­ly, be­fore the dead­line, act­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Allyson West said 60 per cent of some 1,200 work­ers did not sub­mit their re­sponse. She added that of the re­main­ing 40 per cent, the ma­jor­i­ty agreed to join the TTRA.