Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

With the cost of liv­ing sky­rock­et­ing as fu­el and food prices rise, the coun­try’s em­ploy­ers are say­ing there might not be sig­nif­i­cant salary in­creas­es any time soon.

While the In­dus­tri­al Court has tra­di­tion­al­ly been viewed as pro-work­er, a judge­ment in Feb­ru­ary in favour of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion’s (T&TEC) came as a sur­prise. The court de­ter­mined that work­ers will not get salary in­creas­es for 2015 to 2017 be­cause the com­pa­ny is not in a fi­nan­cial po­si­tion to in­crease wages.

The work­ers, rep­re­sent­ed by the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU), had sought a 12 per cent in­crease. The union said it will ap­peal the de­ci­sion.

In the first week of April, Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al ad­vised that wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with pub­lic sec­tor unions be­gan on March 28. The CPO is meet­ing with 11 unions and as­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing 90,000 em­ploy­ees in the pub­lic ser­vice.

Stag­nant Wages

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce wel­comed the In­dus­tri­al Court rul­ing in the T&TEC mat­ter and ex­pressed the view the coun­try’s econ­o­my can­not sup­port large scale salary in­creas­es at this.

“The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty takes its cue from the econ­o­my for every­thing, from in­vest­ment to bor­row­ing, to cre­at­ing and sus­tain­ing em­ploy­ment. The eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion is not a fic­tion cre­at­ed by busi­ness­es. Em­ploy­ee ben­e­fits every­where in the world are di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the ex­ist­ing eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. For ex­am­ple, when our econ­o­my is good, our wages sur­pass not on­ly our Caribbean neigh­bours, but al­so North Amer­i­can rates for cer­tain jobs. When our econ­o­my is down, busi­ness­es strug­gle to main­tain jobs,” the Cham­ber said in s state­ment.

“In the last two years, many small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es lost their busi­ness­es and some now run the risk of los­ing their prop­er­ties. In those cas­es, em­ploy­ees were dis­placed. This is a mat­ter of try­ing to sur­vive for all of us. Busi­ness own­ers are not preda­tors who in­vest sig­nif­i­cant time and mon­ey in their hu­man re­sources and sim­ply lay in wait to throw that in­vest­ment away at the most op­por­tune mo­ment. Busi­ness, and cer­tain­ly our mem­bers, do not op­er­ate on that ba­sis.”

The Cham­ber said it as­sumes that the In­dus­tri­al Court con­sid­ered all fac­tors when it made its de­ci­sion on T&TEC wages.

“The court is man­dat­ed un­der the terms of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act to take in­to ac­count the in­ter­ests of the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole in mak­ing any de­ci­sion, which in­cludes the econ­o­my. You would re­call dur­ing the NAR Gov­ern­ment, the Court sup­port­ed the then ad­min­is­tra­tion by agree­ing that in the con­text of the then re­ces­sion, the Gov­ern­ment right­ly froze pub­lic sec­tor CO­LA and oth­er ben­e­fits. We would ex­pect that the Court would rule based on the facts pre­sent­ed by both sides and rule on those mer­its along with what was in the in­ter­est of the com­mu­ni­ty.”

The Em­ploy­ers’ Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) said the In­dus­tri­al Court’s de­ci­sion was not sur­pris­ing.

“We can on­ly trust that the Court would have been con­sis­tent in re­view­ing all the fac­tors that must be con­sid­ered to in­form its de­ci­sion in mat­ters of this na­ture. The Court ex­plained that to place an oblig­a­tion on a loss-mak­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion to in­crease its cur­rent wage bill as well as make retroac­tive pay­ments on salaries and oth­er al­lowances for the past five to sev­en years may have had such a neg­a­tive im­pact that it would in­evitably re­sult in a loss of jobs,” the ECA said.

Ac­cord­ing to the ECA, the judge­ment will not nec­es­sar­i­ly set a prece­dent as each case must be judged on its mer­it.

It added: “It is no se­cret that many or­gan­i­sa­tions were se­vere­ly im­pact­ed, and some con­tin­ue to be im­pact­ed by the events of the past two years, some to the ex­tent of clo­sure, while oth­ers have been forced to sig­nif­i­cant­ly scale back or al­ter their op­er­a­tions for sur­vival. The un­for­tu­nate thing is that many ne­go­ti­a­tions, though ap­plic­a­ble to past pe­ri­ods where eco­nom­ic for­tunes were much dif­fer­ent, are now tak­ing place in an en­vi­ron­ment made ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult by the un­prece­dent­ed im­pacts of the pan­dem­ic—an en­vi­ron­ment that is very dy­nam­ic and still evolv­ing.”

The as­so­ci­at­ed shared da­ta from a 2021 em­ploy­er sur­vey which showed that close to 55 per cent of re­spon­dents in­di­cat­ed that their op­er­a­tions had ceased, ei­ther par­tial­ly or com­plete­ly, dur­ing pe­ri­ods of non-es­sen­tial re­stric­tions, while 72 per cent re­port­ed de­creas­es in rev­enue dur­ing 2020 and 2021, some by more than 50 per cent.

“How­ev­er, oth­ers have con­tin­ued to do well de­spite the at­ten­dant chal­lenges. In this re­gard, we ex­pect that where salary in­creas­es are un­der con­sid­er­a­tion, these cir­cum­stances will be care­ful­ly con­tex­tu­alised with­in all the fac­tors that can im­pact the abil­i­ty of an or­gan­i­sa­tion to pay and sus­tain such in­creas­es,” the ECA said.

The ECA added dur­ing an eco­nom­ic down­turn it is nat­ur­al for wages to stag­nate.

“Dur­ing pe­ri­ods of eco­nom­ic de­cline and un­cer­tain­ty, wages are usu­al­ly one of the things that will stag­nate as cash-strapped or­gan­i­sa­tions try to cov­er their op­er­at­ing over­heads, in­clud­ing staff costs, to stay afloat. The big­ger ques­tion is whether the way we con­duct ne­go­ti­a­tions, es­pe­cial­ly in the state sec­tor, is still rel­e­vant. The col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process is an im­por­tant ex­er­cise which al­lows for, among oth­er things, the pe­ri­od­ic re­view of wages. This is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant where the cost of liv­ing con­tin­ues to in­crease. How­ev­er, de­pend­ing on the or­gan­i­sa­tion, an in­crease in wages with­out con­sid­er­a­tion of all per­ti­nent or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and wider so­cio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors will be ir­re­spon­si­ble and dan­ger­ous.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion warned that it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al and rec­om­mend­ed a new ap­proach to wage ne­go­ti­a­tions where salary in­creas­es are linked to per­for­mance.

Unions not op­ti­mistic

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tise is not con­fi­dent that pub­lic sec­tor work­ers will get their dues now that wage ne­go­ti­a­tions have start­ed.

“It’s nine years and in re­spect of Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege and oth­ers it’s been more than 15 years. How­ev­er, we will pur­sue an out­come that du­ly takes in­to ac­count the hard­ships ex­pe­ri­enced by our mem­bers and their in­alien­able right to af­ford their ba­sic needs such as shel­ter, food and more­so to pro­vide same for their fam­i­ly. Democ­ra­cy must ben­e­fit the ma­jor­i­ty not on­ly the ‘1’ per­cent,” he said

For­mer Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) Joseph Re­my point­ed out when work­ers are de­nied salary in­creas­es, this hurts the en­tire econ­o­my be­cause lit­tle mon­ey is be­ing spent to stim­u­late the econ­o­my.

Re­my said some state en­ti­ties and pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies are do­ing well and can raise their work­ers’ salaries.

Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) Michael An­nis­sette said in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions de­ci­sions should be based on the re­al­i­ties of what is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try. Not­ing that the coun­try has been in a deep eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion for years and the in­fla­tion rate is ris­ing, he won­dered how the work­ing class would sur­vive if their salaries are stag­nant.

Ris­ing cost of liv­ing

Al­though wages in some sec­tors have not in­creased over the last few years, prices have been ris­ing.

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon said prices in­creased by more than 6.5 per cent be­tween March 2018 and last Jan­u­ary.

“In this time, there were in­creas­es in the prices of food items by 11.4 per cent, bread and ce­re­als by 8.3 per cent, home own­er­ship by 13 per cent, rent by sev­en per cent, trans­port by five per cent, al­co­holic bev­er­ages by 9.5 per cent, fur­ni­ture and house­hold equip­ment by four per cent, prices at restau­rants and cafes by eight per cent, to name a few. In the com­ing months we will see fur­ther in­creas­es for sta­ples such as flour. The price of wheat in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in­creased by 55 per cent since Feb­ru­ary 16.”

Based on the ef­fects of the war in Ukraine and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al fac­tors, Ar­joon pre­dicts that wages will con­tin­ue to be erod­ed caus­ing greater pover­ty.

“The low­er in­come brack­ets will bear the worst brunt. It is in­evitable that work­ers in the pri­vate and pub­lic ser­vice will clam­our for high­er wages. Giv­en that the pri­vate sec­tor is al­ready bur­dened with a high­er cost of do­ing busi­ness from the in­creased costs of im­ports and ship­ping, black mar­ket forex rates, and added fu­el costs, any in­crease in wages will cause them to push up prices even high­er to the con­sumer.

“This spi­ral of in­creas­ing prices will fur­ther harm lo­cal busi­ness prof­itabil­i­ty which was al­ready tak­en a hit due to the pan­dem­ic—high­er prices, low­er spend­ing. This not on­ly af­fects sales rev­enues but al­so lim­its the pur­chas­ing pow­er for low­er in­come house­holds fur­ther and ex­ac­er­bates pover­ty,” Ar­joon said.

“Gov­ern­ment may al­so have to  in­crease sev­er­al grants like the food card pro­gramme and se­nior cit­i­zens grants to help the most vul­ner­a­ble cope with the high­er cost of liv­ing. This de­feats the pur­pose of sav­ing funds through a low­er fu­el sub­sidy, as the same monies will have to be spent in more so­cial pro­grammes which could have been avoid­ed if they with­held the fu­el price in­crease for now,” he said.