Ot­to Car­ring­ton

More than 300 Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) work­ers were served with re­trench­ment let­ters on Fri­day, as the com­pa­ny restart­ed its re­trench­ment ex­er­cise.

How­ev­er, the work­ers and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) are plan­ning to take the State agency to court again, as they see the ac­tion by TSTT as high-hand­ed and against the law.

“We went to court com­plain­ing about the no­tice of re­trench­ment and the 45 days no­tice that was not placed in the no­tice and the com­pa­ny re-is­sued an­oth­er no­tice of re­trench­ment and in this no­tice to the union it does not con­tain the names and the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the work­ers and it does not con­tain the length of ser­vice and the cur­rent wage of the work­ers, it does not con­tain the rea­son for re­dun­dan­cy and the cri­te­ria used for this re­trench­ment,” said CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al Clyde El­der said.

He added: “The act clear­ly states that a no­tice of re­trench­ment must con­tain those things and this no­tice does not con­tain that, so I reached out to TSTT about the no­tice and I told them that I would al­low them to take it back to cor­rect it and give me one that is in com­pli­ance with the act and they called back and told us that what they gave us was suf­fi­cient and they are not go­ing to take it back.”

The union had ini­tial­ly served the work­ers with re­trench­ment let­ters at the end of May but the CWU filed an in­junc­tion in the In­dus­tri­al Court block­ing the move.

El­der said this sit­u­a­tion with TSTT con­tin­ues to be a fi­as­co and is mag­ni­fied by the com­pa­ny telling the union “we don’t have mon­ey to pay 468 em­ploy­ees but are hir­ing per­sons in top-lev­el po­si­tions at the State en­ti­ty.”

He said, “I am call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Prime Min­is­ter to in­ter­vene now.”

He added: “We have been speak­ing with our mem­bers and we have had a meet­ing with them and some per­sons are hap­py to go home be­cause they have been at TSTT for a long time and their pack­age is look­ing great, while some are hop­ing they can stay as they have mort­gages to pay, fam­i­ly to look af­ter and chil­dren to send to school.”

He said the union plans to file an­oth­er ac­tion in court.