RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette has raised con­cerns about the lack of di­ver­si­ty and labour rep­re­sen­ta­tion on state boards.

An­nisette first made the com­ments about the ab­sence of labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives on state boards dur­ing the Labour Day Ral­ly in Fyz­abad on Thurs­day, prompt­ing a re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

He has since said his re­marks were not in­tend­ed to pro­voke di­vi­sion or “crit­i­cise” but to “speak truth to pow­er.”

Asked to elab­o­rate on this yes­ter­day, An­nisette said the ex­clu­sion of labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the ap­par­ent lack of eth­nic and class di­ver­si­ty on state boards was rais­ing con­cern across the trade union sec­tor.

“Yes, ob­vi­ous­ly, if we are se­ri­ous about break­ing this eth­nic kind of pol­i­tics and race pol­i­tics, the UNC, in my hum­ble opin­ion, must rise above that,” An­nisette said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

“There must be di­ver­si­ty not on­ly in what we say but in what we do. If you love us and we are all your chil­dren, then there should be no bas­tard chil­dren in any fam­i­ly.”

An­nisette stressed that di­ver­si­ty should not on­ly be about race and eth­nic­i­ty, but al­so about in­clud­ing work­ing-class voic­es.

“Labour must have in­put on state boards, es­pe­cial­ly where there are ma­jor­i­ty-recog­nised unions. That is part of tri-par­tism. You can’t talk tri-par­tism and not prac­tise it.”

He said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbed at the com­po­si­tion of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT), Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS), Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) boards. He said labour’s pres­ence on boards would help in­form de­ci­sion-mak­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in en­ter­pris­es that di­rect­ly af­fect work­ers’ wel­fare.

“We must not be an af­ter­thought. What­ev­er de­ci­sion a board makes will af­fect work­ers. We must have a say from the bot­tom to the top,” he said.

An­nisette said his re­marks came af­ter NATUC mem­bers no­ticed that re­cent board ap­point­ments at sev­er­al agen­cies lacked union rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

“We ob­served the NGC, the T&TEC board, and oth­ers. Right away, we saw no labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives. That was a deep con­cern of the NATUC ex­ec­u­tive and oth­ers in the trade union move­ment.”

He added, “I thought it was ap­pro­pri­ate to speak truth to pow­er. I was not gos­sip­ing. I was ex­press­ing the voice of labour. I was taught to speak the truth, no mat­ter how painful.”

He said some of the com­ments he made pub­licly on Thurs­day were al­so shared by oth­er union rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

“There were oth­er unions that ex­pressed that same view. It was im­por­tant for me to raise the is­sue on Labour Day be­cause what we were see­ing was ex­clu­sion. That ex­clu­sion is a prob­lem.”

He point­ed out that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had ben­e­fit­ed from labour’s sup­port in the lead-up to the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“Sev­er­al unions, in­clud­ing the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union, stood up strong­ly against the PNM’s four per cent of­fer. We were there in de­fi­ance of what the last gov­ern­ment was do­ing.”

He said the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment can­not af­ford to re­peat the mis­steps of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“You can­not cor­rect a wrong by do­ing what the PNM did. That is not how democ­ra­cy works. I crit­i­cised the PNM, and I will crit­i­cise the UNC in that con­text. I want to see more bal­anced boards, not on­ly from one eth­nic­i­ty. There must be di­ver­si­ty,” he ar­gued.

Asked whether he had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak with the Prime Min­is­ter be­fore rais­ing the mat­ter pub­licly, An­nisette said no.

“I woke up one morn­ing and saw the boards be­ing ap­point­ed. I thought it would have been pru­dent to in­clude labour. That would have sent the right sig­nal to the work­ing class.”

He added, “When you talk about be­ing peo­ple-cen­tred and work­er-cen­tred, you must show that by ac­tion. That means giv­ing labour its right­ful seat at the ta­ble, not on­ly when it’s con­ve­nient.”

An­nisette said the is­sue was not about po­lit­i­cal favour but about prin­ci­ple.

“Ger­many has made it a pol­i­cy to in­clude labour on boards. Labour knows what is hap­pen­ing on the ground. We are in touch with the work­ers. That per­spec­tive is im­por­tant for any board to func­tion prop­er­ly.”

He said the cur­rent com­po­si­tion of the boards at agen­cies such as WASA, MTS, NGC and T&TEC al­so failed to re­flect the re­al­i­ty of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion.

On Labour Day, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed to the con­cerns raised by An­nisette when he had ad­dressed the gath­er­ing ear­li­er.

Speak­ing from the same plat­form, she said her Gov­ern­ment had al­ready be­gun ap­point­ing mem­bers of the labour move­ment to state boards and in­tend­ed to do more.

“Al­ready, we have start­ed to place per­sons from the labour move­ment on the state boards,” she said.

“Those who think it’s tak­ing too long, re­mem­ber Rome was not built in a day. We are work­ing on it.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said 18 more boards were in the process of be­ing ap­point­ed, and she as­sured the labour move­ment that they would not be left out.

“I have asked my Min­is­ter of Labour to co­or­di­nate that li­ai­son with the labour move­ment to en­sure that labour is not left out. Every­body, all will have a place.”

She al­so made a broad­er call for co­op­er­a­tion.

“Let us work to­geth­er for the bet­ter­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We are say­ing we will work on the work­ers’ agen­da in this coun­try.”