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Thursday, February 20, 2025

TTPost managing director calls for good sense during negotiations

by

24 days ago
20250128
TTPost general manager, operations, George Alexis, speaks during an interview at the TTPost headquarters in Piarco yesterday.

TTPost general manager, operations, George Alexis, speaks during an interview at the TTPost headquarters in Piarco yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPost) gen­er­al man­ag­er George Alex­is is urg­ing that good sense pre­vail in the con­tin­u­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and be­tween the state-owned com­pa­ny and the T&T Postal Work­ers’ Union.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the Na­tion­al Mail Cen­tre, Pi­ar­co, yes­ter­day, Alex­is sought to clar­i­fy state­ments made by the union, par­tic­u­lar­ly their claim that an 18.6 per cent salary in­crease had been grant­ed and was owed to work­ers.

He said, “It was a rec­om­men­da­tion made by a con­sul­tant who’s nei­ther part of the or­gan­i­sa­tion nor part of the gov­ern­ment struc­ture. A rec­om­men­da­tion is just that—a rec­om­men­da­tion.”

He added, “The study it­self was re­viewed by the chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer (CPO) sev­er­al years ago. The CPO found that the job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise had sev­er­al flaws and ad­vised that it need­ed to be re­vis­it­ed.”

Alex­is al­so not­ed that the union was made aware of this in writ­ing. The rec­om­men­da­tion dates back to 2010. Alex­is said any de­ci­sion by the cor­po­ra­tion or Gov­ern­ment to ad­just work­er salaries had to go through col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and be based on pre­vail­ing mar­ket con­di­tions.

Re­gard­ing the union’s claim of an agree­ment to im­ple­ment the 18.6 per cent in­crease, Alex­is said, “We’ve asked to see a copy of that agree­ment. If pre­vi­ous man­age­ment signed off on it, we would like to see it.”

He al­so de­nied claims by the union that man­age­ment was en­cour­ag­ing staff to sign pe­ti­tions to the union that they want­ed the four per cent that was be­ing of­fered by TTPost.

The union’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary, David Forbes, made this claim last week.

“Well, the union called me last week, I be­lieve it was Thurs­day. I can’t re­mem­ber the ex­act time, but it was late morn­ing, and they said they had some con­cerns about their mem­bers sign­ing pe­ti­tions and send­ing it to them,” Alex­is said.

“As I said to Mr Forbes in that phone con­ver­sa­tion, that is not man­age­ment busi­ness. That is be­tween the mem­bers of the union and the ex­ec­u­tive of the union. Any work­ers that come to my man­age­ment team and ask about these is­sues, I di­rect them, and I di­rect my man­agers, to take it up with the union.”

The state com­pa­ny was al­so chas­tised by the union for host­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions at Drew Manor in San­ta Cruz.

How­ev­er, Alex­is said, “Hold­ing meet­ings in an of­fice en­vi­ron­ment that’s es­sen­tial­ly a shop floor set­ting can lead to dis­trac­tions and lim­it pro­duc­tiv­i­ty dur­ing ses­sions. It’s im­por­tant to con­sid­er that such meet­ings would have been bud­get­ed for in ad­vance.

“The union’s as­ser­tion that these funds should be al­lo­cat­ed to work­ers over­looks the re­al­i­ty that fi­nan­cial pro­vi­sions for ar­rears, back­pay, or salary ad­just­ments are sep­a­rate from the com­pa­ny’s bud­get­ing for op­er­a­tional needs, such as meet­ings with third par­ties or oth­er rou­tine ex­pens­es.”

The union and TTPost man­age­ment met on Jan­u­ary 24 at Drew Manor in San­ta Cruz. Since then, TTPost said, the union has not sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als.


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