RAPHAEL JOHN LALL

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers' Union (CWU) said yes­ter­day that it is pre­pared to "bat­tle to the end" to pro­tect the cost of liv­ing al­lowance (Co­la) of work­ers at TSTT.CWU pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my warned that "the for­mu­la for the cal­cu­la­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion is not to be tam­pered with by any­one, from TSTT's man­age­ment to the line min­istries".Re­my went to the me­dia yes­ter­day with the union's con­cern that the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny was plan­ning to ad­just the Co­la paid to its work­ers.

"Over the years, Co­la has been cal­cu­lat­ed based on the eco­nom­ic prin­ci­ple of in­dex­a­tion. This meant that the al­lowance was ap­plied and cal­cu­lat­ed based on the Con­sumer Price In­dex (CPI) as de­ter­mined by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO)," he said at a me­dia con­fer­ence, at CWU's head of­fice in Port-of-Spain.

The is­sue has come up as the com­pa­ny and union ne­go­ti­a­tion and new agree­ment for TSTT's ju­nior and se­nior staff. Talks be­gan last month and on De­cem­ber 17 both sides signed off on terms of set­tle­ment for se­nior staff with Co­la arrange­ment on sim­i­lar terms as ju­nior staff .Re­my said two days lat­er, on De­cem­ber 19, TSTT's man­age­ment re­turned to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble and said they had in­struc­tions to re­duce the Co­la.

"Over the years, the ap­pli­ca­tion of Co­la was nev­er an item in dis­pute. TSTT has once again re­sumed its at­tack on the eco­nom­ic prin­ci­ple of Co­la by in­dex­a­tion," he said."This at­tack has the tac­it ap­proval of the board of di­rec­tors and by ex­ten­sion the line min­istries that TSTT re­ports to. It is al­so part of a na­tion­al bat­tle by em­ploy­ers to have the prin­ci­ple of Co­la by in­dex­a­tion re­moved and re­placed by fixed Co­la," Re­my said.

"This is a ma­jor con­tra­dic­tion and we will al­ways main­tain that as long as the cost of liv­ing ris­es, there must be a com­men­su­rate change in the cost of liv­ing al­lowance to act as an eco­nom­ic buffer to pro­tect the pur­chas­ing pow­er of the work­ers' dol­lar."The CWU leader is call­ing for in­ter­ven­tions by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Nizam Baksh and Fi­nance Min­ster Lar­ry Howai. He said that TSTT is op­er­at­ing in a "fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive" en­vi­ron­ment and an un­sta­ble in­dus­tri­al en­vi­ron­ment is not good".

"This bat­tle for Co­la is crit­i­cal for the pro­gres­sive trade union move­ment. This prin­ci­ple is sacro­sanct and as such will be de­fend­ed by every pos­si­ble re­source avail­able to the trade union," he said.