There will be no rest­ing or re­flect­ing for teach­ers to­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, has warned.

Speak­ing dur­ing a hasti­ly called press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ar­mour an­nounced that the Min­istry of Labour had suc­cess­ful­ly filed an ex parte in­junc­tion against the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) at the In­dus­tri­al Court to stop planned protest ac­tion to­day.

Ar­mour made the an­nounce­ment at the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs’ of­fices at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza in Port-of-Spain.

“The ap­pli­ca­tion was made by the Min­is­ter of Labour in the con­text of on­go­ing il­le­gal ac­tion by TTUTA and the mem­bers of that as­so­ci­a­tion. The mem­bers of the teach­ing ser­vice of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Gov­ern­ment be­came very con­cerned to make an ap­pli­ca­tion to the court to bring an end to this il­le­gal ac­tion in the na­tion­al in­ter­est,” Ar­mour said.

The ex parte ap­pli­ca­tion was filed pur­suant to Sec­tion 65 of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act at 3 pm yes­ter­day.

By 5 pm, the mat­ter was heard by In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix, vice-pres­i­dent Her­bert Sover­all, chair­man of the In­dus­tri­al Court’s Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion Lawrence Achong and mem­ber Gre­go­ry Rousseau.

While TTUTA, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive body for teach­ers, was not present at the hear­ing yes­ter­day, Ar­mour said one of their at­tor­neys had a con­ver­sa­tion with Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau, the lead at­tor­ney for the Labour Min­istry, and there­fore they were aware of the le­gal ac­tion.

Ar­mour said the ac­tion was tak­en to pro­tect par­ents from il­le­gal ac­tions tak­en by teach­ers.

“The il­le­gal in­dus­tri­al ac­tion which was be­ing tak­en start­ed on Sep­tem­ber 5, the first day of the open­ing of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in the new term in T&T, and the record shows that up­wards of 50 per cent, some­times as high as high as 70 per cent of pri­ma­ry school teach­ers and sec­ondary school teach­ers, have stayed away from school as a re­sult of be­ing called on by their union to ‘rest and re­flect’,” Ar­mour said.

“That ac­tion is threat­ened to con­tin­ue to­mor­row, which is the first day of school for the com­ing week and it is against the back­ground of that threat­ened ac­tion that the Gov­ern­ment took the de­ci­sion to ap­proach the court,” he added.

Ar­mour said ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 69: 1 (d) of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, the teach­ing ser­vice is an es­sen­tial ser­vice and is there­fore not per­mit­ted to take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion whether it be “rest­ing and re­flect­ing” or any­thing amount­ing to not turn­ing out to work.

He said the le­gal team was re­ly­ing on a “com­pelling” 1997 judg­ment against TTUTA to but­tress its case.

“There could be no doubt on the part of TTUTA or, in fact, those ad­vis­ing the union, that the ac­tion that they have un­der­tak­en over the last cou­ple weeks, since the start of the new school term, is il­le­gal,” Ar­mour said.

Ar­mour said if TTUTA or teach­ers breach the court’s or­der, they are li­able to tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in fines or even loss of em­ploy­ment as a re­sult of a breach of con­tract.

“It is my con­fi­dent ex­pec­ta­tion that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens of T&T in­clud­ing teach­ers will turn out for work to­mor­row and par­ents of those stu­dents can ex­pect to send their chil­dren to school and the schools will be prop­er­ly staffed,” he said.

He warned that TTUTA, as a union, could be de-reg­is­tered if it does not heed the court’s rul­ing.

Ar­mour al­so warned doc­tors is­su­ing sick leave cer­tifi­cates for to­day to be aware of the terms of the or­der from the In­dus­tri­al Court, as all such doc­u­ments will be prop­er­ly scru­ti­nised.

Asked if he felt the ac­tion by the Gov­ern­ment would fur­ther anger teach­ers, Ar­mour said, “I can­not speak to the emo­tion­al con­di­tion of TTUTA or teach­ers as to whether they will be an­gry or not that is not for me to say all I would say is that the Gov­ern­ment was very con­cerned about what was a con­tin­u­ing state of il­le­gal­i­ty and has gone to court and has been suc­cess­ful in per­suad­ing the In­dus­tri­al Court, the Su­pe­ri­or Court of record, to is­sue an or­der to pro­tect the con­tin­u­ing func­tion­ing of our school sys­tems and pre­vent any fur­ther il­le­gal­i­ty.”

The mat­ter will be heard on No­vem­ber 24 at 1.30 pm.