Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Liken­ing them­selves as a phoenix, sup­pos­ed­ly ris­ing out of the ash­es of the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU), the Re­pub­lic Work­ers Union (RWU) of­fi­cial­ly launched yes­ter­day.

Pres­i­dent of RWU Ja­son Thomas told those gath­ered at the St Au­gus­tine Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre that he and his ex­ec­u­tive will take the mem­ber­ship of Re­pub­lic Bank, the largest sin­gle en­ti­ty with­in the amal­ga­ma­tion, out of BIG­WU and go af­ter oth­er sec­tors.

Yes­ter­day’s of­fi­cial launch came a year af­ter four mem­bers were sus­pend­ed by BIG­WU pres­i­dent Don De­venish. The Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee mem­bers sus­pend­ed were Ja­son Brown (Deputy Pres­i­dent), Na­dine Baksh (Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary), Naresh Ram­per­sad (Deputy Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary), and Sta­cy Ann Lewis (As­sis­tant Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary).

The ac­cu­sa­tions were that the mem­bers had un­der­mined De­venish’s au­thor­i­ty by plan­ning a re­tire­ment func­tion as he was near­ing his 65th birth­day in Ju­ly. They were ac­cused of un­der­min­ing his au­thor­i­ty.

De­venish and Brown, now RWU’s labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer, had been at log­ger­heads for some time be­fore the sus­pen­sion. Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed then that they were at log­ger­heads over fi­nan­cial mat­ters with­in the union.

“RWU was formed with one goal in mind,” Thomas told the gath­ered. “To pro­vide a fo­cused, ded­i­cat­ed voice for work­ers in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try. As work­ers of Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, we saw the need for a union that un­der­stood our unique chal­lenges. A union that will ad­vo­cate tire­less­ly on be­half of work­ers. This, among oth­er things, is why we chose to sep­a­rate our­selves from BIG­WU.”

Sun­day Guardian called the BIG­WU pres­i­dent four times be­tween 5 pm and 8 pm yes­ter­day, but he did not an­swer or re­turn the missed calls. Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian af­ter the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers and shop stew­ards, led by Brown, took their oath of of­fice, Thomas said his union plans to re­cruit mem­bers from un­der the BIG­WU um­brel­la, which in­cludes in­sur­ance agents and me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers.

“This is some­thing that had to hap­pen. It is not a mat­ter of just be­ing up­set. We tried to warn them. We tried to get change to take place from the in­side, to deal with the is­sues, and we were nev­er tak­en on. So rather than fight to change some­thing that you don’t want to change, let’s bring the cor­rect thing to the peo­ple. Work­ers are now get­ting what they de­serve: prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion and a voice,” said Thomas.

He said that as the RWU fights to be­come the recog­nised union for fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, two cred­it unions have al­ready ex­pressed in­ter­est in join­ing him.

He added that of the al­most 2,000 Re­pub­lic Bank mem­bers of BIG­WU, about half have left, with many of them join­ing RWU.