Ahead of next Wednesday's High Court matter concerning the pension plan for former Telco and TSTT employees, dozens of workers staged a lunch time protest yesterday at TSTT's Edward Street, Port-of-Spain office.
Explaining why workers were protesting even as a high court judge had not yet ruled on the matter, President of the Communication Workers' Union (CWU) Joseph Remy said the union joined with the Telco and TSTT pensioners to protest and highlight the problems they were having with the Telco pension plan and the TSTT medical plan.
"The Telco pension plan is in the High Court right now. We are challenging the company's unilateral intervention in the plan and as such it is impacting negatively on the retirees. We are also challenging the failure of the Telco pension plan to pay improved benefits to the pensioners and the retirees."The medical plan is subject to discussion between the union and the company at the Ministry of Labour and it is ongoing; the matter has not been resolved as yet," he said.
The matter surfaced in 2012 when CWU obtained an injunction from the High Court in February 2012, restraining TSTT from convening elections of members to the Telco Pension Plan Management Committee. The action was initiated by CWU.But, John Julien, General Secretary addressing workers and speaking about the medical plan, said he was not impressed when he learnt who had submitted tenders to provide a health plan for the company.
The second issue was that retirees paid extra medical plan premiums while they were employed by the company, "in order that persons who were retired, did not have to pay in the medical plan. Now that (the retirees) are into their retirement we (those currently employed at TSTT) now have to pay some extra money to ensure that they (the retirees) don't have to pay any or it (the payment) is minimised. That means we will be coming out to the active staff to speak to you all because it will incur a small increase in your rate," he said.
Workers plan to protest on April 12 on St James Street in San Fernando.