“To hell with them”.

That is the bat­tle cry from the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) af­ter some 503 work­ers were hand­ed ter­mi­na­tion let­ters on Thurs­day.

The CWU’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary Clyde El­der led a protest ac­tion out­side the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) head of­fice on Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain on Fri­day to brief the me­dia on their re­sponse to the mass dis­missals and their plans go­ing for­ward.

“They could do me what they want to do me, that is not go­ing to stop me, in fact, it has strength­ened me in my re­solve to rep­re­sent the work­ing class,” El­der said, as he was one of the work­ers served ter­mi­na­tion no­tice.

“We have some steps com­ing, I was in dis­cus­sion with our at­tor­neys to ex­plore our le­gal op­tions. We have es­ca­lat­ed to oth­er ar­eas, which I would not tell you now,” he said.

El­der said the CWU al­so spoke with oth­er “en­ti­ties” to join with them to push back against the com­pa­ny.

“It is a pos­si­bil­i­ty it can go to the In­dus­tri­al Court,” he said.

The 503 work­ers, he said, are cur­rent­ly “on no­tice”.

“Say­ing that at the end of this year, you could be re­trenched. That’s no­tice. In the no­tice pe­ri­od, any­thing can hap­pen,” he said.

He said the work­ers can still be re­trained, re­tooled and re­de­ployed with­in the com­pa­ny with­in the 45-day no­tice pe­ri­od. On­ly af­ter that pe­ri­od has elapsed, will work­ers know their fate.

El­der said the Gov­ern­ment owes TSTT some $426 mil­lion.

“Is TSTT and the Gov­ern­ment say­ing that be­cause the Gov­ern­ment ow­ing them mon­ey we are be­ing re­trenched? So if the Gov­ern­ment pay them, we stay­ing in the com­pa­ny?” he asked.

“If that is the case then pay we mon­ey now,” El­der said.

“Pay TSTT the mon­ey that your Gov­ern­ment owe to the com­pa­ny so we could stay em­ployed if that’s the log­ic,” he said.

El­der likened the com­pa­ny’s ac­tion against em­ploy­ees to the shut down of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery. He said the same tem­plate would be ap­plied to the WASA and T&TEC.

“Don’t feel it go­ing to stop here,” he said.

El­der said that just af­ter the Guardian news­pa­per first re­port­ed that TSTT planned to send home some 2,000 work­ers in Oc­to­ber, the com­pa­ny wrote to the union seek­ing to al­le­vi­ate that con­cern.

El­der said the com­pa­ny as­suaged the work­ers fear that mas­sive job cuts were com­ing on­ly to turn around and fire over 500 work­ers in a sin­gle day.

“TSTT was be­ing dis­hon­est and to­day we are vin­di­cat­ed. TSTT ac­tions have shown that they can­not be trust­ed, that they are liars, de­ceivers, con­sis­tent with the PNM gov­ern­ment,” he said.

El­der rub­bished the com­pa­ny’s bid to blame the work­ers’ salaries for the high over­heads.

El­der said while the CEO Ronald Wal­cott sought to blame the high wage bill and debt on the work­ers, it was the ex­ec­u­tive that car­ried the high­est salaries.

He said that Wal­cott’s salary was over $250,000 per month.

“The high em­ploy­ee cost comes from them. We have the da­ta to show where over 1,600 bar­gain­ing unit staff, their salary is $322 mil­lion for the year, then how do you ex­plain $800 mil­lion in salaries?” he asked.

“It means that the rest of them up there, which is less than 400 is be­ing paid more than 1,600 peo­ple. That is what that means,” he said.