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Monday, March 3, 2025

After sickout by employees...

Union says some working conditions at Port improving

by

Carisa Lee
353 days ago
20240315
Vehicles wait in line to board the Cabo Star at the Cruise Ship Complex on Dock Road, Port-of-Spain, earlier this month.

Vehicles wait in line to board the Cabo Star at the Cruise Ship Complex on Dock Road, Port-of-Spain, earlier this month.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) Michael An­nisette says af­ter a meet­ing with man­age­ment on March 4, they have been see­ing some im­prove­ments to the health and safe­ty is­sues they raised re­gard­ing op­er­a­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

The trade union leader said man­age­ment was un­aware of some of their com­plaints, so the SWW­TU sent a three-page doc­u­ment high­light­ing con­cerns and the work to solve the is­sues has be­gun.

On March 2, the Port of Port-of-Spain (PPOS) is­sued a re­lease ad­vis­ing cus­tomers of an in­ter­rup­tion in op­er­a­tions due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of the full com­ple­ment of staff.

This was the sec­ond time the over 1,000 work­ers at the port had tak­en in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. In late Feb­ru­ary, ab­sen­teeism al­so caused dis­rup­tions at the Port.

On that oc­ca­sion, how­ev­er, apart from health and safe­ty is­sues, the SWW­TU al­so raised a salary in­crease dis­pute.

Ac­cord­ing to An­nisette, some of the is­sues raised by port work­ers were bad light­ing, no work­ing alarm on the Scar­bor­ough Port, im­prop­er chang­ing rooms and equip­ment which was not suit­ed for the op­er­a­tions.

An­nisette said he’s head­ing to To­ba­go to­day to meet with mem­bers and man­age­ment about their is­sues.

Chair­man of the Port, Lyle Alexan­der, con­firmed that op­er­a­tions have not been af­fect­ed since the meet­ing.

“They have been com­ing out to work and they have met with man­age­ment and dis­cus­sions have tak­en place which is go­ing on, it’s as nor­mal as it could be at this stage,” Alexan­der said.

But in case there is a re­cur­rence, Alexan­der said an un­of­fi­cial con­tin­gency plan has been de­vised so cus­tomers are less af­fect­ed.

“There will al­ways be a re­sponse to what­ev­er cir­cum­stance comes up on the hori­zon...man­age­ment had a slate of ac­tions that they can pull from in the event if cer­tain things hap­pen,” he ex­plained.

An­nisette added yes­ter­day that while the health and safe­ty is­sues were be­ing ad­dressed there are oth­er mat­ters that man­age­ment will have to look in­to.

He iden­ti­fied these as the pe­ri­od for con­fir­ma­tion of work­ers’ pen­sion plans, as well as man­age­ment en­gag­ing with the union when de­ci­sions are made, as some mat­ters need to be giv­en at­ten­tion.

Last week, the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) said it was con­cerned about the im­pact re­peat­ed in­ter­rup­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain would have on the econ­o­my and the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

In a state­ment is­sued to the me­dia, DO­MA said ves­sels from ma­jor ship­ping lines re­mained off­shore, un­able to berth or dis­charge their car­go. DO­MA warned that if the de­lays con­tin­ue, ship­ping lines may by­pass the PPOS and go on to oth­ers to main­tain their sched­ules.


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