Carisa Lee

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) wants to make it abun­dant­ly clear to its mem­bers that the union did not come to an agree­ment with the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) on the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise.

“The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union has not agreed nor ac­cept­ed that a re­strict­ing and a re­trench­ment is in­deed war­rant­ed in TSTT,” sec­re­tary gen­er­al Clyde El­der said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the union’s Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters on Tues­day.

His state­ment came af­ter TSTT is­sued a press re­lease yes­ter­day ti­tled “TSTT and CWU agree.”

The first line of the doc­u­ment said, “Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (TSTT) and its recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU), have come to an agree­ment that will see the or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­ue with its re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise with­out de­lay.”

But El­der said this was mis­lead­ing and the on­ly thing that they were cur­rent­ly on the same page about was TSTT’s law­less ac­tions, which caused the CWU to file an in­junc­tion in the In­dus­tri­al Court.

He said this was im­por­tant to out­line be­cause while some work­ers were hap­py to take their pack­ages and go, oth­ers were not cop­ing well.

“We have those who are on the brink of hav­ing sui­ci­dal thoughts,” he said.

On May 31, TSTT an­nounced that it would send home 403 work­ers, 376 of whom were unionised, their re­trench­ment set to be ef­fec­tive on June 1.

El­der said this was against the law, as the union and the em­ploy­ees should have got­ten 45 days’ no­tice. He said the com­pa­ny asked for their side to be heard af­ter the in­junc­tion was filed and their chance was yes­ter­day, but be­fore the hear­ing they with­drew.

“What has since tran­spired is that at­tor­neys of both the com­pa­ny and the union have been hav­ing dis­cus­sions and the com­pa­ny, in fact, reached out to the union and in­di­cat­ed to the union that they want­ed to now ad­here to the laws.

“So ef­fec­tive­ly, the com­pa­ny was say­ing we ac­cept that we did wrong and we want to make it right,” he said.

The re­trench­ment no­tice now starts on June 1 and ends on Ju­ly 15.

El­der said this was ex­act­ly what they want­ed and went to court to com­plain about the 45 days’ no­tice.

“So the union has been very suc­cess­ful and vic­to­ri­ous with the con­sent or­der, the con­sent or­der is, in fact, an ad­mis­sion by the com­pa­ny that they were wrong sand that they are fix­ing their wrongs,” he said.

TSTT said this will not re­duce em­ploy­ees’ sev­er­ance pack­ages in any way and re­trench­ment no­tices were al­so is­sued to 65 of TSTT’s man­age­ment staff.

El­der said in the com­ing weeks, both par­ties will be in con­sul­ta­tions as the union con­tin­ues to fight.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed TSTT CEO Lisa Agard and Man­ag­er Me­dia and Stake­hold­er Re­la­tions Janelle David for a com­ment on the union’s claims but all calls went unan­swered.

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