Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Pub­lic ser­vice work­ers could be set for a wage in­crease soon af­ter it was con­firmed that Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al had start­ed wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with all pub­lic ser­vice as­so­ci­a­tions and unions.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease from the Fi­nance Min­istry yes­ter­day, ne­go­ti­a­tions be­gan on March 28 fol­low­ing in­struc­tions from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

It is ex­pect­ed that in the com­ing weeks, the CPO will meet with 11 unions and as­so­ci­a­tions to en­gage in ne­go­ti­a­tions for re­vised terms and con­di­tions for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90,000 pub­lic ser­vice em­ploy­ees—most of whom are said to be on 2013 salaries.

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion met vir­tu­al­ly with the CPO yes­ter­day.

“Our in­ten­tion is to, at least, at the end of ne­go­ti­a­tions, that our mem­bers would have main­tained their stan­dard of liv­ing, in re­spect to where they would have been in 2013,” PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste told Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the meet­ing.

In a press re­lease af­ter the meet­ing, the PSA said the CPO out­lined the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to set­tle two or more pe­ri­ods of out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, with the in­ten­tion of bring­ing salaries as close to cur­rent as pos­si­ble, con­tin­gent on what the state can af­ford.

The re­lease said the CPO claimed that CO­LA will not be con­sol­i­dat­ed with salaries pri­or to any in­creas­es as it can­not be af­ford­ed by the state and if it’s to be con­sid­ered, then there will be no ne­go­ti­a­tions.

In re­sponse, Bap­tiste said the union could not ac­cept the CPO’s po­si­tion on the non-con­sol­i­da­tion of CO­LA be­cause ul­ti­ma­tums were not in the spir­it of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. How­ev­er, Bap­tiste said, the PSA looked for­ward to fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the CPO.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the PSA said it told the CPO that while it ac­knowl­edged oil and gas rev­enues de­clined dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2012 to now, the union had con­cerns about Gov­ern­ment’s ex­pen­di­ture dur­ing that time.

“The PSA not­ed that the gap be­tween the haves and the have nots con­tin­ues to widen and what the min­istry pre­sent­ed with re­spect to salaries and wages as a per­cent­age of Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture can­not be con­sid­ered in iso­la­tion of the dwin­dling mid­dle class and the ero­sion of the pur­chas­ing pow­er of work­ers,” the re­lease said.

On March 28, the CPO met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, in­clud­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, T&T Prison Ser­vice, T&T De­fence Force and the T&T Fire Ser­vice.

Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son said yes­ter­day the meet­ing with the CPO was cor­dial. He said the CPO pro­vid­ed an eco­nom­ic brief over a ten-year span and an eco­nom­ic out­look for the next two years.

“The in­for­ma­tion is there will be no freez­ing and no cut of salaries. Nonethe­less, there will be en­gage­ments as to first­ly, pri­or­i­ty al­lowances and new al­lowances to de­ter­mine a pri­or­i­ty list. Those will be giv­en pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion in terms of the al­lo­ca­tions,” he said.

“The Gov­ern­ment will be mak­ing an of­fer for at least two tri­en­ni­ums, with even con­sid­er­a­tion to go as close to cur­rent as pos­si­ble.”

The Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer, Dick­son said, will be made, at lat­est, by mid-May.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cers owed back­pay be­tween 2014 and 2018 will be paid be­fore month’s end, he said.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of T&T gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said while they wel­comed the dis­cus­sions, they had some con­cerns about ne­go­ti­a­tions for work­ers who did not fall un­der the re­mit of the CPO. He said the union was writ­ing to the Fi­nance Min­istry on this.

“Yes, those ne­go­ti­a­tions would have kick-start­ed but there are thou­sands of oth­er work­ers who fall un­der the statu­to­ry boards of oth­er gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties whose ne­go­ti­a­tions do not fall un­der the re­mit of the CPO,” An­nisette said.

“For ex­am­ple, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go—where we have out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for dock work­ers for the 2014-2017 pe­ri­od that is yet to be set­tled with the Min­istry of Fi­nance.”

An­nisette said there were al­so work­ers from the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny (MTS), Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC), In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) who did not fall un­der the CPO’s purview and had, as a re­sult, been left out of ne­go­ti­a­tions.

NATUC al­so ex­pressed its de­sire to have ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween its mem­ber or­gan­i­sa­tions and the CPO con­duct­ed un­der the uni­fied NATUC um­brel­la.

Anisette said NATUC be­lieved a uni­fied ap­proach would be more pro­duc­tive and sen­si­ble.

While NATUC con­firmed dis­cus­sions with the CPO were un­der­way, the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union said it was yet to be con­tact­ed. Ac­cord­ing to OTWU chief ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer Ozzi War­wick, the union had mem­bers who were work­ing on 2012 salaries.

“This is more crit­i­cal than ever be­fore be­cause I mean we are talk­ing about in­fla­tion that would have eat­en up the val­ue of their dol­lar. You’re talk­ing about work­ers who would have been af­fect­ed by COVID. So, this is now, more than ever, a crit­i­cal mo­ment for work­ers to get an ad­just­ment and they de­serve it,” he said.

“Re­mem­ber we gave them a round of ap­plause, but now they need to feed their fam­i­ly. They have to send chil­dren to school. You have to find your rent mon­ey…This is the re­al­i­ty for tens of thou­sands of work­ers.”

On April 4, the CPO is ex­pect­ed to meet with unions rep­re­sent­ing dai­ly paid work­ers, while on April 7, Dr Din­di­al will meet with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, in his 2021/2022 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, promised that pub­lic ser­vice salary ne­go­ti­a­tions would be­gin in ear­ly 2022.