One month the de­liv­er­ing a let­ter to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter in which they re­quest­ed pri­or­i­ty fo­cus be placed on the set­tle­ment of out­stand­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions to all pub­lic ser­vants, the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) to­day de­liv­ered a “gen­tle re­minder” to Colm Im­bert that 2020 may not be­gin as smooth­ly as the gov­ern­ment is an­tic­i­pat­ing.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters as he ex­it­ed the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Port-of-Spain around 10.45 am af­ter de­liv­er­ing the let­ter, JTUM leader An­cel Ro­get de­scribed Im­bert’s si­lence as a mark of dis­re­spect to the hard-work­ing em­ploy­ees who en­sure the wheels of gov­er­nance keep turn­ing.

The JTUM leader said, “Our pur­pose here this morn­ing is to com­mu­ni­cate to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance that we sent to him, on No­vem­ber 21st, a doc­u­ment de­tail­ing all of the out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions that come un­der the um­brel­la of the JTUM.”

Ro­get claimed this rep­re­sent­ed, “Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 ne­go­ti­a­tions for dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing dat­ing to as far back as 2005 to present.”

He said in some cas­es, there were con­sec­u­tive col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods that were yet to be set­tled.

Stress­ing that JTUM had been forced to turn up this morn­ing to fol­low through on its’ orig­i­nal cor­re­spon­dence, Ro­get said, “From then to now, we have had no ac­knowl­edge­ment or re­sponse to such a very im­por­tant and cru­cial doc­u­ment.”

Sur­round­ed by the lead­ers from sev­er­al of JTUM’s mem­bers, Ro­get ex­plained, “This rep­re­sents a debt that is owed to all of those work­ers who are rep­re­sent­ed by var­i­ous trade unions, for dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing.”

“We feel it is a gross in­sult to the work­ers that con­tin­ue to work stead­fast­ly from then to now and have had to en­dure all of the va­garies such as cost of liv­ing and in­fla­tion, and still con­tin­ue to pro­duce.”

Un­will­ing to re­veal if Im­bert had been giv­en a dead­line by which to re­spond, Ro­get hint­ed that if he failed to re­spond in a time­ly man­ner, next year would not be with­out some sur­pris­es of its’ own.

De­clin­ing to say more, he likened the re­sponse to Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent sur­prise re­gard­ing the chang­ing over the old $100 bills to the new poly­mer bills.

He said, “I think this Gov­ern­ment likes to im­ple­ment the el­e­ment of sur­prise and one such el­e­ment of sur­prise is what they sprung on the pop­u­la­tion right as we speak. Peo­ple are go­ing through the hard­ship of hav­ing to line up in the sun and rain to change out their own mon­ey and we want to af­ford our­selves the same op­por­tu­ni­ty for the el­e­ment of sur­prise.”

Ro­get com­mis­er­at­ed with the thou­sands of bank­ing em­ploy­ees who had been placed un­der se­vere strain and hard­ship with this change-over as he said their phys­i­cal, health and men­tal well-be­ing was in jeop­ardy be­cause of the longer hours in un­healthy and un­safe en­vi­ron­ments.

He ques­tioned where were the “elit­ist” crowds lin­ing up to change their mon­ey as he said, “They have the most amount of mon­ey to change but you don’t see them hav­ing to bear that pres­sure.”

He said JTUM had de­cid­ed on giv­ing the min­is­ter a bit of a gen­tle re­minder that dis­cus­sions need­ed to be had as it re­lat­ed to out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions which need to be set­tled with­in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

Ro­get said it was time that dis­cus­sions with the rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials as to how and when this debt is go­ing to be dis­charged.

He said, “A debt is a debt and ought to be re­paid.”

“It is a gross dis­re­spect to owe work­ers and not dis­cuss how you are go­ing to pay this debt.”

Among the unions that turned up to­day was the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion; the Avi­a­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Al­lied Work­ers Union; the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion; the Postal Work­ers Union; the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union; the San­i­ta­tion and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union; the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union; the Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union; the Goat and Sheep Farm­ers Union; and the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union.

Ro­get con­clud­ed, “All work­ers must be treat­ed fair­ly and just­ly. We are not ask­ing for any­thing that we don’t de­serve or did not work for, we are ask­ing for what is ours and for work­ers in this coun­try to be treat­ed with the req­ui­site lev­el of re­spect and dig­ni­ty.”