There are two very dif­fer­ent opin­ions com­ing out of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) meet­ing with its se­nior man­agers at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, last Fri­day. While the com­pa­ny is deny­ing dis­cussing re­brand­ing with the se­nior man­agers, two se­nior man­agers who at­tend­ed the meet­ing are say­ing the op­po­site.

A com­pa­ny re­lease yes­ter­day even con­tra­dict­ed in­for­ma­tion giv­en by its own se­nior man­ag­er, pub­lic re­la­tions & ex­ter­nal af­fairs Graeme Suite on Sun­day. When asked about the meet­ing then, Suite said “the meet­ing did not of­fer any de­tails on the amount of po­si­tions to be filled, just a high-lev­el view of dif­fer­ent busi­ness ar­eas.”

But in yes­ter­day’s me­dia state­ment, the com­pa­ny de­nied dis­cussing di­vid­ing TSTT in­to those same busi­ness parts.

TSTT is­sued a staunch de­nial of a T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle which said man­agers were told of the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to re­brand TSTT in­to the TSTT Group of Com­pa­nies and that some 2,000 jobs were go­ing to be af­fect­ed be­cause of this move.

In the state­ment, TSTT said it con­demned the er­ro­neous in­for­ma­tion con­tained in the ar­ti­cle on Mon­day.

The com­pa­ny said it held its cus­tom­ary “health of the busi­ness” meet­ing for se­nior man­agers but said at no time, dur­ing that fo­rum was man­age­ment ad­vised that they would ei­ther lose their jobs or need to reap­ply for any jobs that cur­rent­ly ex­ist with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The com­pa­ny al­so said TSTT had some 2091 work­ers—1,933 per­ma­nent and 158 tem­po­rary—and they were nev­er told that the com­pa­ny would be re­named or that 2,000 em­ploy­ees or any spe­cif­ic num­ber of em­ploy­ees would lose their jobs as part of a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise.

TSTT al­so de­nied the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union’s as­ser­tion that it in­tend­ed to plan a new com­pa­ny and fire all the work­ers.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny con­firmed that it was do­ing an as­sess­ment of the work­ers to en­sure that “em­ploy­ees have the right tools and train­ing to move in­to the new di­rec­tion.”

But an­oth­er se­nior man­ag­er who at­tend­ed Fri­day’s meet­ing called the me­dia re­lease “a lie”. Speak­ing un­der con­di­tion of anonymi­ty for fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, the man­ag­er in­sist­ed that all non-unionised staff at the meet­ing were told of the for­ma­tion of the hold­ing com­pa­ny and the four sub­sidiary com­pa­nies.

“Am­plia, a com­pa­ny for mo­bile busi­ness, en­ter­prise busi­ness and res­i­den­tial ser­vices is go­ing to start rolling out by No­vem­ber 9,” the se­nior man­ag­er said.

The man­ag­er said they named two peo­ple on the as­sess­ment team and said all man­agers were be­ing sent for psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing be­fore be­ing re-em­ployed.

“Over 2,000 em­ploy­ees are to be af­fect­ed,” the se­nior man­ag­er said.

“Am­plia wasn’t do­ing much and TSTT now re­struc­tur­ing to make use of Am­plia. Am­plia will now take over all of TSTT fi­bre, which is the bulk of TSTT’s as­sets and op­er­a­tions as it is the fu­ture in com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

On Sun­day just af­ter 2.30 pm, the T&T Guardian mes­saged Suite ask­ing for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the four sub-di­vi­sions of the new TSTT hold­ing com­pa­ny.

“I don’t have the au­tho­ri­sa­tion to give any com­ment at this time but the in­fo the union shared is not ac­cu­rate,” Suite said in a re­sponse af­ter 8 pm on Sun­day.