At May Day cel­e­bra­tions in San Fer­nan­do on Thurs­day, leader of the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cel Ro­get her­ald­ed the re­turn of labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the cor­ri­dors of pow­er with his de­c­la­ra­tion: “It’s we time now!”

As part of the “Coali­tion of In­ter­ests” that pro­pelled the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to a re­sound­ing vic­to­ry in Mon­day’s elec­tion, the OW­TU and oth­er unions have cap­tured seats in Par­lia­ment. Ernesto Ke­sar and Clyde El­der were elect­ed as the MPs for Point Fortin and La Brea, key con­stituen­cies in the coun­try’s oil belt.

This is not an un­usu­al de­vel­op­ment. Trade union­ists have held seats and have had op­por­tu­ni­ties for their voic­es to be heard at the high­est lev­els of de­ci­sion-mak­ing in T&T.

This has been the case for as long as par­ty pol­i­tics has ex­ist­ed here, with unions play­ing cru­cial roles as mo­bilis­ers and or­gan­is­ers of the work­ing class.

One of the ear­li­est po­lit­i­cal par­ties in this coun­try, the Trinidad Labour Par­ty, emerged in 1934 from the Trinidad Work­ing­men’s As­so­ci­a­tion, a trade union led by labour hero Cap­tain Arthur An­drew Cipri­ani.

The fa­ther of the lo­cal labour move­ment, Tubal Uri­ah “Buzz” But­ler, was a mem­ber of that par­ty at one time. Af­ter he was ex­pelled, al­leged­ly for dis­play­ing “ex­trem­ist ten­den­cies,” he went on to form a se­ries of po­lit­i­cal par­ties—the British Em­pire Cit­i­zens’ and Work­ers’ Home Rule Par­ty, the But­ler Home Rule Par­ty, and fi­nal­ly, the But­ler Par­ty.

Bas­deo Pan­day, T&T’s fifth prime min­is­ter, made his po­lit­i­cal de­but in 1965 as a mem­ber of the Work­ers and Farm­ers Par­ty, then a decade lat­er, as pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Trade Union (ATS­GW­TU), joined forces with fel­low labour lead­ers George Weekes and Raf­fique Shah to found the Unit­ed Labour Front.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first stint as Prime Min­is­ter was at the helm of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP), a coali­tion es­tab­lished in April 2010 with the Fyz­abad Ac­cord which was signed at Char­lie King Junc­tion, a sig­nif­i­cant lo­ca­tion in the his­to­ry of the labour move­ment.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there were sig­nif­i­cant frac­tures in the PP’s re­la­tion­ship with the labour move­ment by the time the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion was held, lead­ing to the coali­tion’s de­feat and its even­tu­al dis­so­lu­tion by the end of that year.

The PNM’s re­la­tion­ship with the labour move­ment has been even more con­tentious. The with­draw­al of trade unions from the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil (NTAC), which was in­tend­ed to be a mech­a­nism for mean­ing­ful di­a­logue be­tween gov­ern­ment, busi­ness and labour, sig­nalled the col­lapse of the PNM/JTUM Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment signed just weeks ahead of the par­ty’s re­turn to pow­er in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

The on-again-off-again re­la­tion­ship be­tween labour unions and suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments has not on­ly af­fect­ed elec­tion out­comes but cre­at­ed in­con­sis­ten­cies in the way work­ers’ in­ter­ests are rep­re­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment.

Will it be dif­fer­ent this time around? It can be if the cel­e­bra­to­ry at­mos­phere at the May Day ral­ly ear­li­er this week gives way to a strong work­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion and labour.

That re­quires an align­ment of goals and avoid­ance of the in­ter­nal con­flicts that have bro­ken up all pre­vi­ous al­liances be­tween labour and pol­i­tics. Oth­er­wise, there could be a re­peat of the fail­ures that fol­lowed the vic­to­ries of 1986 and 2010.

It is up to this new coali­tion to un­do a his­to­ry of ac­ri­mo­nious breakups.