Carib Brew­ery must sur­vive and thrive as the last in­de­pen­dent­ly owned brew­ery in the Caribbean, ac­cord­ing to An­tho­ny Sab­ga III, ANSA Sec­tor Head-Bev­er­age.

He was speak­ing af­ter he col­lect­ed the award for Em­ploy­er of the Year when the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) staged its 11th An­nu­al Awards and Ap­pre­ci­a­tion func­tion at Rovanel’s Re­sort, Store Bay Lo­cal Road, To­ba­go on Sat­ur­day.

“It is in our mu­tu­al in­ter­est to pay at­ten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Glob­al­ly the bev­er­age in­dus­try is dom­i­nat­ed by a few size­able play­ers and com­pe­ti­tion among them is of­ten bru­tal. Ever-chang­ing con­sumer tastes fur­ther add op­er­at­ing risks, as we have seen with the re­cent launch of our Shandy Por­tu­gal and Caribe Hard Trop­i­cal Cider. Pric­ing mar­gins are fre­quent­ly un­der pres­sure, so too are com­mod­i­ty and raw ma­te­r­i­al costs,” he said.

Sab­ga, the chair­man of Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (CDC) which op­er­ates the Carib Brew­ery and two oth­ers in Grena­da and St Lu­cia, said sound op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cies and pru­dent cost man­age­ment are need­ed to sur­vive in tur­bu­lent eco­nom­ic times.

“Mis­steps in read­ing and re­spond­ing to these glob­al trends can have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on all as­pects of func­tion­al­i­ty,” he said.

Sab­ga in­vit­ed the NUGFW to con­tin­ue to part­ner with the CDC to re­alise CDC’s vi­sion to be a sig­nif­i­cant role play­er in the bev­er­age in­dus­try,

Sab­ga said 2019 would be a piv­otal year for CDC.

He said, “This past year, our rein­vig­o­rat­ed ap­proach of proac­tive en­gage­ment through non-cri­sis meet­ings, healthy and ro­bust di­a­logue on mat­ters of mu­tu­al in­ter­est and a con­tin­ued dis­play of rec­i­p­ro­cal re­spect and due con­sid­er­a­tion for each oth­er, have all gone a long way in ce­ment­ing our re­la­tion­ship with the NUGFW, and has brought us to where we are to­day, be­ing award­ed the Em­ploy­er of the Year 2018.”

He said in 2019 CDC will work pow­er­ful­ly, col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and fear­less­ly to en­sure the im­por­tant in­ter­ests of stake­hold­ers are se­cured. He said these ar­eas in­clude time­ly clo­sure of the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for month­ly, hourly and week­ly-rat­ed work­ers for the pe­ri­od 2019-2022. As­sur­ing the in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness of CDC’s work­force and en­sur­ing a safe and healthy op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment with the agree­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of a drug and sub­stance pol­i­cy.

He said, “At the end of the day, we all want the same things. We want a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. Our em­ploy­ees want to be treat­ed with re­spect and to be paid for their work. This is but one ap­proach to na­tion-build­ing, and we have a part to play. At Carib Brew­ery Lim­it­ed we will con­tribute to build­ing pa­tri­o­tism with our prod­ucts, through our em­ploy­ees and with­in peo­ple, wher­ev­er we op­er­ate. The ANSA McAL Group has been proud­ly fly­ing the flag of T&T for over 135 years, and that will nev­er change.”

James Lam­bert, NUGFW pres­i­dent, said em­ploy­ees could no longer work for one hour and ex­pect to be paid for a full day. Lam­bert told the gath­er­ing that em­ploy­ees must give a fair day’s work since the coun­try can no longer af­ford to hire per­sons who are not pro­duc­tive.

He said short-chang­ing the em­ploy­er was al­so a form of cor­rup­tion that should not be tol­er­at­ed. “There is cor­rup­tion among our­selves as em­ploy­ees be­cause when your con­tract in­di­cates that you must work from 7-4 and you work from 7-8 that al­so is cor­rup­tion,” he said.

He said the NUGFW was for­tu­nate that it did not lose many mem­bers as oth­er labour bod­ies did in 2018 through re­trench­ment.