Some 503 Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) work­ers have re­ceived ter­mi­na­tion let­ters.

Among those served with the no­tices yes­ter­day was Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Clyde El­der.

In re­sponse, the union is now plan­ning a re­tal­ia­to­ry protest out­side TSTT’s head of­fice to­day, with plans to ramp up the protest ac­tion at dif­fer­ent lev­els tar­get­ing the coun­try’s hi­er­ar­chy.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, El­der said af­ter the first protest out­side TSTT’s head of­fice they are plan­ning ac­tion out­side the of­fices of Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Robert Le Hunte and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“We are ex­plor­ing all le­gal op­tions as well,” El­der said.

The union is al­so un­sure of how many work­ers are be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed as TSTT has re­fused to sup­ply the names of any ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers who are not part of the CWU bar­gain­ing unit.

In the let­ter to the union, how­ev­er, TSTT seemed to blame the lay­offs square­ly on the union’s shoul­ders.

“Per­sons could not have been trained be­cause of your union’s po­si­tion on the im­prove­ment of skills. Per­sons could not be pro­mot­ed be­cause the or­gan­i­sa­tion was out of align­ment,” the TSTT let­ter said.

TSTT point­ed out in the let­ter that be­cause of its high salary out­put, “busi­ness as usu­al is not an op­tion.”

“At 35 per cent of rev­enue, our em­ploy­ee costs are sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the 15 per cent av­er­age,” TSTT said.

The com­pa­ny re­ferred El­der to a meet­ing with the union on Oc­to­ber 26, in which it point­ed out that it had op­er­at­ed at a loss of some $32.5 mil­lion at the end of March 2018. In the en­su­ing six months, the com­pa­ny said its loss­es stood at $478.8 mil­lion.

“This loss in­cludes a charge of $356 mil­lion as­so­ci­at­ed with un­paid re­ceiv­ables by our CCTV client and giv­en the new re­al­i­ty, rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal rev­enue ad­just­ment go­ing for­ward,” the TSTT let­ter said.

In the let­ter to El­der, TSTT said the com­pa­ny was last re­struc­tured in 1999, some 20 years ago.

“Over the years the de­liv­er­ables and roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties have changed. In oth­er words, peo­ple were do­ing work which was not aligned with cus­tomer needs,” the com­pa­ny said.

All work­ers can ex­pect to be paid off their sev­er­ance by the end of Jan­u­ary, TSTT not­ed.

With re­gards to El­der’s ter­mi­na­tion, the com­pa­ny said it had utilised the Last In First Out method of re­trench­ment. He was told to de­liv­er all com­pa­ny prop­er­ty and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to the com­pa­ny by the end of De­cem­ber.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, TSTT CEO Ronald Wal­cott said this was the first wave of job loss­es. The sec­ond phase of re­struc­tur­ing will in­clude the ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of non-unionised em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing those at the “ex­ec­u­tive lev­el,” he said.

Wal­cott said the com­pa­ny record­ed an op­er­a­tional loss of some $32.5 mil­lion and that TSTT was “plagued with a peren­ni­al prob­lem of high em­ploy­ee costs.” He said con­trary to in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main, of the $768 mil­lion dol­lar wage bill, pay­ments to ju­nior and se­nior staff com­prised some 82.3 per cent of that bill.

He said added to that the com­pa­ny has a mas­sive debt bur­den of some $1.8 bil­lion and 40 per cent of that is re­lat­ed to the back­pay set­tle­ments to ju­nior and se­nior staff. Wal­cott said pay­ment amounts to some $700 mil­lion.

Wal­cott al­so said this trans­for­ma­tion of TSTT is vi­tal for its sur­vival.

Just one month ago, the T&T Guardian had re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that TSTT was plan­ning this move as part of re­shap­ing the com­pa­ny in­to the TSTT Group of Com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny then is­sued a ve­he­ment de­nial of that re­port, de­scrib­ing it as “fab­ri­cat­ed” and “er­ro­neous.”