Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) is urg­ing the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) to ac­tive­ly de­fend work­ers’ rights, de­spite the coali­tion the or­gan­i­sa­tion has formed with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The Gov­ern­ment is a UNC Gov­ern­ment with a coali­tion of in­ter­ests, but whose in­ter­ests are be­ing served? As a mat­ter of fact, we have a pres­ence of labour unions in Par­lia­ment, but they are on mute,” CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said dur­ing a lunchtime protest out­side the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (TSTT) head of­fice yes­ter­day.

Ogeer em­pha­sised that the CWU re­mains in­de­pen­dent and ac­count­able on­ly to its mem­ber­ship, ques­tion­ing whether sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters who pre­vi­ous­ly came from the labour move­ment—and the JTUM pres­i­dent—can make the same claim.

“Clyde El­der, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, was once a vo­cif­er­ous trade union­ist, and now he sits in a seat of pow­er in Par­lia­ment. We al­so have Leroy Bap­tiste, for­mer­ly of the PSA, and Ernesto Ke­sar. But where is their voice?” she asked.

She con­tin­ued, “What says An­cel Ro­get, pres­i­dent of JTUM? CWU op­er­ates un­der the JTUM um­brel­la, but we are wit­ness­ing peo­ple los­ing their jobs every day—thou­sands of work­ers are af­fect­ed.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to El­der, JTUM pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get, Ke­sar and Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste, but they ei­ther de­clined com­ment or did not re­spond.

Mean­while, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath ad­dressed labour is­sues at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, prais­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s re­la­tion­ship with unions while not­ing that “Rome was not built in a day.”

“You al­so have the NUGFW re­ceiv­ing their 10 per cent and ex­press­ing their sat­is­fac­tion with gov­ern­ment-labour re­la­tions. These mat­ters are re­ceiv­ing Gov­ern­ment at­ten­tion; in due course, those in­volved will pro­vide fur­ther up­dates,” Padarath said.

The min­is­ter’s re­marks were in ref­er­ence to on­go­ing protests by the T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion over in­suf­fi­cient re­mu­ner­a­tion at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. The nurs­es have pledged a ma­jor protest on April 16.

Mean­while, the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion con­tin­ues to push for a Gov­ern­ment com­mit­ment to dis­burse amend­ed salaries and back­pay.

At the CWU protest yes­ter­day, three Good Fri­day bobolees were dis­played to rep­re­sent TSTT ex­ec­u­tives: chair­man Kern Dass, vice-pres­i­dent of tech­nol­o­gy Rat­tan Boodram, and chief hu­man re­sources of­fi­cer De­bra Thomas.

Ogeer sym­bol­i­cal­ly beat the two male bobolees while ver­bal­ly crit­i­cis­ing Thomas’ ef­fi­gy. All three ex­ec­u­tives have faced crit­i­cism for their han­dling of labour re­la­tions. Dass, in par­tic­u­lar, was im­pli­cat­ed over ap­proval of a con­tro­ver­sial To­ba­go re­treat, which Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ac­crued in­voic­es to­talling $436,081.78. Padarath, how­ev­er, says TSTT sub­mit­ted in­voic­es to him show­ing $165,000, mi­nus VAT.

Yes­ter­day, Padarath said he had no ob­jec­tion to TSTT shar­ing the re­ceipts with the CWU. The union has said it pos­sess­es its own doc­u­men­ta­tion from the re­treat, which it will al­so share with the min­is­ter. Ogeer added that copies will al­so be sent to Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les for trans­paren­cy.