The Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court has warned that cli­mate change, as ev­i­denced by the on­go­ing heat wave in T&T, can af­fect in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions. And she has urged em­ploy­ers to pri­ori­tise this is­sue amid glob­al warm­ing con­cerns.  

Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix made the com­ment at the spe­cial sit­ting of the In­dus­tri­al Court to mark the open­ing of its 2023-2024 law term. In her open­ing ad­dress, Thomas-Fe­lix said cli­mate change will neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the work­force and cause low­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, as well as nov­el chal­lenges such as heat stroke, heat ex­haus­tion, heat cramps, heat rash­es, and oth­er risks.  

“In T&T, we know on­ly too well the in­tense heat ex­pe­ri­enced when we are out­doors for work or when we dare to ven­ture out­doors dur­ing work hours. Al­so, there are work­ers who ex­pe­ri­ence in­tense heat and dis­com­fort when work­ing in­doors be­cause they work in build­ings that are not prop­er­ly ven­ti­lat­ed,” she said.

“I was sur­prised to learn of the ex­ten­sive re­search on the ef­fects of work­ing in heat and heat stress. Heat stress refers to heat re­ceived in ex­cess of that which the body can tol­er­ate with­out suf­fer­ing phys­i­o­log­i­cal im­pair­ment. The ex­po­sure to ex­treme heat can re­sult in oc­cu­pa­tion­al ill­ness, in­juries, and even death,” she con­tin­ued.

Thomas-Fe­lix said the em­ploy­ees who are more at risk in­clude fire­fight­ers, bak­ery work­ers, farm­ers, con­struc­tion work­ers, min­ers, boil­er room work­ers, and fac­to­ry work­ers among oth­ers.  

“The in­creas­ing ex­treme weath­er events di­rect­ly place work­ers who are en­gaged on con­struc­tion sites, agri­cul­ture, and in some cas­es the es­sen­tial ser­vices with­in di­rect risk. The so­cial part­ners should there­fore en­cour­age the adop­tion of sound health and safe­ty mech­a­nisms and poli­cies in the work­place.

“Ad­e­quate safe­ty mea­sures are para­mount in pro­tect­ing work­ers from heat-re­lat­ed ill­ness­es, air qual­i­ty haz­ards, and oth­er cli­mate-re­lat­ed dan­gers,” she said.

With that in mind, she said work­ing from home may be a vi­able op­tion. Thomas-Fe­lix al­so sug­gest­ed an­nu­al train­ing for em­ploy­ees.

“I al­so think it will be very use­ful for em­ploy­ers and unions to in­cor­po­rate claus­es in col­lec­tive agree­ments for the an­nu­al train­ing of work­ers es­pe­cial­ly those who are at greater risk so that they can un­der­stand the dan­ger of heat stress, and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns which af­fect their health and safe­ty and al­so learn of pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures,” she said.  

Mean­while, Thomas-Fe­lix re­it­er­at­ed pre­vi­ous calls for so­cial di­a­logue with mu­tu­al re­spect be­tween the par­ties in­volved.  

“I urge the so­cial part­ners to think long and hard on whether you wish to have con­tin­u­ous dis­cord, ar­ro­gance, and games­man­ship or rather do you meet in good faith to find so­lu­tions to­geth­er to achieve that com­mon goal,” she said.

“If there is no so­cial di­a­logue and the busi­ness en­ter­prise col­laps­es, then you may end up los­ing the bath wa­ter, the basin and even the ba­by. I there­fore im­plore you to nev­er lose fo­cus on what is your ul­ti­mate com­mon goal which is for the busi­ness own­er to re­alise prof­its and for work­ers to re­ceive their just re­mu­ner­a­tions and ben­e­fits for de­cent work,” she added.  

Ac­cord­ing to Thomas-Fe­lix, dur­ing the year in re­view from Sep­tem­ber 15, 2022, to Sep­tem­ber 14, 2023, 793 new cas­es were filed at the In­dus­tri­al Court which was 309 less than the same pe­ri­od in 2021/2022. Most of those cas­es were trade dis­putes. She added that the court dis­posed of 909 mat­ters, 62 more than the year pri­or. These in­clud­ed 253 judg­ments, 289 with­drawals, 320 set­tled mat­ters, and 44 dis­missals.

Union lead­ers on break­down of re­spect

Mean­while, a cou­ple of union lead­ers have laid blame at the feet of the Gov­ern­ment as it re­lates to the break­down of re­spect in dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process. The Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get said the Gov­ern­ment was the first to dis­re­spect the unions and they on­ly re­spond­ed.  

“All of the state agen­cies, they have tak­en the po­si­tion they will lawyer up and have the most ex­pen­sive le­gal team to en­sure that there is no so­cial di­a­logue. So, while the min­is­ter of labour will say one thing, his gov­ern­ment prac­tices some­thing else, and there­in lies the prob­lem. And so, we have ab­solute­ly no choice but to, at the end of the road, re­spond to that type of ag­gres­sion with a par­tic­u­lar type of re­sponse which peo­ple don’t like,” he said.  

Like­wise, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Clyde El­der said to get re­spect, the Gov­ern­ment must give it.  

“If we have a gov­ern­ment that shows re­spect, not just for the unions but for the work­ing class as a whole, then you’ll find it’s eas­i­er to have so­cial di­a­logue in the work­place and even tri­par­tite di­a­logue as well with the Gov­ern­ment,” he stat­ed.  

How­ev­er, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son shared a dif­fer­ent view, not­ing that ar­ro­gant en­gage­ment with the State should be a thing of the past and both par­ties must share the same re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.  

“So­cial and col­lec­tive di­a­logue is the best way to go to move a peo­ple for­ward as op­posed to ad­ver­sary en­gage­ment,” he said.  

The Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go  (NATUC) Michael An­nisette al­so wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­turn to the dis­cus­sion ta­ble in peace.  

“The ques­tion of ar­ro­gance has no place in the mod­ern in­dus­tri­al world,” he said in sup­port of Thomas-Fe­lix. 

Labour min­is­ter ap­plauds call for work-from-home pol­i­cy

Ap­plaud­ing her call for a work-from-home pol­i­cy was Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc­Clashie who said the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion was prepar­ing a pro­pos­al on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment.

“Par­tic­u­lar­ly, what struck me–she spoke about re­mote work which I’m a big ad­vo­cate of– and I think that, you know, we re­al­ly have to see more com­pa­nies go­ing in that di­rec­tion,” he said.  

How­ev­er, he not­ed that the work­place is chang­ing rapid­ly, with the meta­verse and oth­er chal­lenges aris­ing. Mean­while, he agreed with the In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent’s re­quest for train­ing on heat-re­lat­ed is­sues though he said it should not be the pri­ma­ry com­po­nent of the col­lec­tive agree­ment.  

With talks of cli­mate change tak­ing cen­tre stage, the Op­po­si­tion’s shad­ow labour min­is­ter Rudy In­dars­ingh ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of stay­ing mum on its ef­fect on the na­tion­al work­force. He said he hoped the Cab­i­net would heed Thomas-Fe­lix’s call, as well as her re­quest for re­spect­ful so­cial di­a­logue.