The Ex­ec­u­tive of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union (AWU) rene­go­ti­at­ed and ac­cept­ed a 4% in­crease for the pe­ri­ods of 2014 - 2016, as well as 2017 - 2019, along with oth­er con­di­tions. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease...

On Au­gust 29, 2022, the Ex­ec­u­tive of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union (A WU), for its Mem­ber­ship, Port of Spain Cor­po­ra­tion (POSC), took the de­ci­sion to rene­go­ti­ate and bring to a close a pe­ri­od of ne­go­ti­a­tion that be­gan in 2014. Aside from the 4% in­crease for the two pe­ri­ods cap­tured above,  A WU agreed to the fol­low­ing: 

1. A one -time lump sum pay­ment of $4000 for Work­er who re­tired com­pul­so­ri­ly, vol­un­tar­i­ly with per­mis­sion or on the grounds of ill health;

2. Schol­ar­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties for both aca­d­e­m­ic and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing pro­grammes at Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour & Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy and Trinzuela Tech­ni­cal & Vo­ca­tion­al Col­lege;

3. While ne­go­ti­at­ing it was dis­cov­ered that there were dis­par­i­ties in the pre­mi­ums and al­lowances re­ceived by the Work­ers of POSC and oth­er Cor­po­ra­tions as such, the Union en­sured that an align­ment was done, giv­en that this will take ef­fect from De­cem­ber 1, 2021; and

4. It was al­so agreed that par­ties will un­der­take a job eval­u­a­tion.

It is im­por­tant to con­tex­tu­al­ize the en­vi­ron­ment in which the de­ci­sion was made to ac­cept the cur­rent of­fer with the ad­di­tions iden­ti­fied above. It was in Oc­to­ber of 2021 that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­di­cat­ed that he had in­struct­ed the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer to com­mence this ex­er­cise with the rel­e­vant trade unions. It was not un­til May of 2022 some eight months lat­er that an of­fer of 2% was placed be­fore the work­ers. This, how­ev­er, was not the start­ing point it was in fact a re-en­gage­ment. The first of­fer placed be­fore the move­ment was in 2016 and that was 0-0-0. It was less than a month be­fore the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, in No­vem­ber of 2016 when the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in­di­cat­ed that Gov­ern­ment would of­fer trade unions rep­re­sent­ing pub­lic ser­vants and em­ploy­ees of State en­ter­pris­es no wage in­creas­es as part of the ad­min­is­tra­tion's at­tempt to curb ex­pen­di­ture. There was no shift in this po­si­tion un­til the of­fer of May 2022.

This was the first time in his­to­ry that A WU had to treat with 3 un­set­tled pe­ri­ods of ne­go­ti­a­tion. It should be not­ed that A WU has made sev­er­al pub­lic calls to the state to meet for the pur­pose of ne­go­ti­a­tion. On Jan­u­ary 28 and Feb­ru­ary 4, 2020 the Union led demon­stra­tions to call for an end to over sev­en years of ne­go­ti­a­tions. It is clear that this de­ci­sion was not made overnight as is be­ing pos­tu­lat­ed in the me­dia, rather the Union rea­son­ably eval­u­at­ed the present cir­cum­stance and the prece­dent set out in the mar­ket. 

In re­cent times the pub­lic has seen where the break­down in ne­go­ti­a­tions which had been sent to the court has not gone the way of the Unions. For ex­am­ple, the In­dus­tri­al Court judg­ment of 0% for the Work­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion. Sim­i­lar­ly, just over a year ago our Com­rades at CWU and TSTT Signed off on four (4) out­stand­ing pe­ri­ods at 5%. The re­al­i­ty of treat­ing with mul­ti­ple pe­ri­ods is that the first ob­jec­tive be­comes bring­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tion cur­rent. There­fore, a ma­jor com­mit­ment of the Union and the state must be to not al­low this to oc­cur again. The Union's fo­cus will turn to the cur­rent pe­ri­od which and place the work­ers in a much bet­ter-ne­go­ti­at­ing po­si­tion when ne­go­ti­at­ing on­ly one pe­ri­od. 

One of the pri­ma­ry lessons from the ex­pe­ri­ence is that the A WU must fo­cus its ef­forts on im­prov­ing the spend­ing pow­er of the salary of the work­ers it rep­re­sents. There was a no­table si­lence from us on a whole when the re­moval of sub­si­dies in­creased the cost of fu­el. This is turn had an ex­po­nen­tial im­pact on the cost of liv­ing. We must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our in­ac­tion as the Min­is­ter tongue in cheek could pro­claim that "they eh ri­ot yet". There is a need for a re­newed com­mit­ment to rep­re­sent­ing mem­bers be­yond the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble. The Unions voice must be more vo­cif­er­ous on food prices, on rental rates, on the cost of ed­u­ca­tion and so on. 

Fi­nal­ly, as un­pop­u­lar as this point might be it has to be made. The Union could not ig­nore the • state of gov­ern­ment rev­enue. The facts are there and the sig­nif­i­cant fall in rev­enue dur­ing the pe­ri­od be­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed can­not be dis­missed. This how­ev­er does not mean that at an­oth­er time the de­ci­sion un­der dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances that the Union's po­si­tion would be the same. We as a Union are mind­ful of the broad­er scope of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that we have to the well­be­ing of the work­ing class re­gard­less of their mem­ber­ship sta­tus.