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Friday, July 4, 2025

Baptiste pledges all hands on deck for workers’ rights

by

15 days ago
20250619
Minister of Labour Small and Micro Enterprise Development, Leroy Baptiste

Minister of Labour Small and Micro Enterprise Development, Leroy Baptiste

Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste has pledged a uni­fied, de­ci­sive ap­proach to ad­dress­ing work­ers’ is­sues, promis­ing fair wage set­tle­ments, leg­isla­tive re­form, and stronger so­cial pro­tec­tion in his first Labour Day mes­sage since as­sum­ing of­fice.

Bap­tiste, the for­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, said the Gov­ern­ment would be­gin set­tling out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at no less than ten per cent for the 2014 to 2019 pe­ri­od.

“This Gov­ern­ment has heard the cries of work­ers at Board of In­land Rev­enue, the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty,” he said, ref­er­enc­ing de­ci­sions to halt the TTRA Act and scrap the WASA Cab­i­net Sub-Com­mit­tee re­port.

“Too many work­ers still face job in­se­cu­ri­ty, too many fam­i­lies are strug­gling with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing… let me as­sure you to­day, you are be­ing heard.”

Bap­tiste said the Work­ers’ Agen­da would in­tro­duce a liv­ing wage, re­duce con­tract labour, and es­tab­lish pro­tec­tions for do­mes­tic work­ers and farm­ers. He al­so promised so­cial ben­e­fits such as hous­ing and health plan ac­cess.

He an­nounced that the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act would be the first of sev­er­al out­dat­ed labour laws to be mod­ernised, and reaf­firmed plans to re-es­tab­lish the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee and guar­an­tee union rep­re­sen­ta­tion on all statu­to­ry boards.

“The fu­ture that the Gov­ern­ment has en­vi­sioned is one that re­quires an all hands-on deck ap­proach… a will­ing­ness to have open and frank dis­cus­sions, cou­pled with strong and de­ci­sive ac­tions,” he said.


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