An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Bank­ing, In­sur­ance, and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) will be meet­ing vir­tu­al­ly with the man­age­ment of the su­per­mar­ket chain Tru Valu to­day at 10:00 am.

This af­ter it was ad­ver­tised in the dai­ly news­pa­pers last week that Tru Valu and Long Cir­cu­lar Mall are up for sale.

In 2020, the liq­uida­tors of CL Fi­nan­cial, Grant Thorn­ton, out­lined plans to ready prop­er­ties for sale that were di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly owned by CL Fi­nan­cial. Tru Valu and Long Cir­cu­lar Mall are owned by one of the group’s sub­sidiaries, Home Con­struc­tion Ltd.

The rep­re­sent­ing union wrote to the Tru Valu man­age­ment last Fri­day, re­quest­ing a meet­ing fol­low­ing the Guardian ar­ti­cle head­lined “Tru Valu has out­stand­ing agree­ments.”  

Yes­ter­day, the su­per­mar­ket’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Sunil Ma­hara­jh sent an email to one of BIG­WU’s se­nior labour re­la­tions of­fi­cers for Tru Valu, Wes­ley Fran­cis, out­lin­ing that the man­age­ment has agreed to a vir­tu­al meet­ing.

BIG­WU rep­re­sents 350 em­ploy­ees from the five branch­es.

The let­ter from the union sent last Fri­day stat­ed, “Giv­en the po­ten­tial im­pli­ca­tions of this de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly its pos­si­ble im­pact on the on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions con­cern­ing the week­ly paid bar­gain­ing unit and oth­er mat­ters be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court, the union con­sid­ers this meet­ing crit­i­cal.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing po­ten­tial re­trench­ment has height­ened con­cern among the em­ploy­ees we rep­re­sent. Con­sid­er­ing your in­volve­ment in pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions, we are con­fi­dent you ap­pre­ci­ate the union’s in­ter­est in ad­dress­ing these con­cerns com­pre­hen­sive­ly.”

The news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment in­di­cat­ed that since its es­tab­lish­ment in 1978, Tru Valu has emerged as one of the largest su­per­mar­ket chains in T&T, with stores in Diego Mar­tin, Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, San Juan, Trinci­ty and Val­park.

The ad­ver­tise­ment not­ed Tru Valu’s five su­per­mar­ket stores have a to­tal square footage of 138,000 square feet with the Trinci­ty Mall branch hav­ing the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the largest su­per­mar­ket in T&T.

“The prime lo­ca­tions are well-es­tab­lished prop­er­ties in high-traf­fic ar­eas across T&T, en­sur­ing max­i­mum vis­i­bil­i­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty. Each su­per­mar­ket is ful­ly equipped and main­tained to a high stan­dard and in­cludes bak­eries, cafes, delis, and phar­ma­cies,” the ad stat­ed.  

CEO of Home Con­struc­tion Ltd (HCL) group of com­pa­nies, Richard Le Blanc said that liq­uida­tors are han­dling the en­tire process, and he could not say what would hap­pen to the work­ers at Tru Valu or ten­ants at the mall. 

The High Court ap­proved the pro­posed sale of both Tru Valu and Long Cir­cu­lar Mall in Sep­tem­ber last year.