?Union leaders and industrial relations experts are calling on state representatives on the boards of the Telecommunications Services of T&T (TSTT) and the Public Transport Services Corporation (PTSC) to resign.
Hollis Nicholas, an industrial relations expert, said the move to decertify a trade union is a serious act, and the line ministers should at least have been informed about the company's actions, as it had the potential to embarrass the government and worsen the industrial relations atmosphere:
"In my opinion, neither of the unions has done anything extreme enough to warrant the companies to take such a drastic step to remove them from the collective bargaining process. "The unions' job is to protest, and sometimes this can be very frustrating to the management team, but at the end of the day, you must understand their agenda. Their right to protest is their only recourse to get what they want out of the collective bargaining process. "If it turns out that they took this measure without consultation with the government, then they were clearly acting outside of their terms of reference as far as the government is concerned, and as a board member, I would feel very uncomfortable continuing on in that capacity."
Government's decision to halt de-certification of the trade unions was a move in the right direction, said Vincent Cabrera, secretary general, National Trade Union Centre. He said the directive from Cabinet showed that the boards of TSTT and PTSC have either lost the confidence of government by acting on their own, or they are being used as the scapegoat for Cabinet's anti-trade union policies. He said government's move to reverse the boards' decision in such a public way is embarrassing to the boards and it insulted workers' intelligence by suggesting that government was unaware of the policies and activities of the State enterprises. Opposition senator Wade Mark has questioned how the boards could have made the decision to decertify the two unions without the line minister or government knowing. "It is highly hypocritical and astonishing for the Government to say that they did not know what was going on," Mark said.
"If government really wants industrial peace, they would instruct TSTT and the PTSC to immediately reinstate the suspended and dismissed workers. Government cannot tell us in 2009 that the workers can only get a 3 per cent increase in salaries over three years. "Their offer is a recipe for labour unrest as well as economic and social instability, and we are already seeing the results of this on the streets," Mark said.