OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The labour move­ment is in­ten­si­fy­ing its calls for the re­moval of In­dus­tri­al Court Judge Lar­ry Achong, ac­cus­ing him of bias and mis­con­duct. Labour lead­ers say Achong com­pro­mis­es the cred­i­bil­i­ty and fair­ness of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions sys­tem.

Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get and Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette yes­ter­day strong­ly con­demned the re­cent ex­ten­sion of Achong’s tenure, call­ing it “a slap in the face” to work­ers and trade unions across the coun­try.

The union lead­ers ex­pressed their dis­ap­point­ment at the move dur­ing a news con­fer­ence out­side Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s.

Last week, a Cab­i­net note re­vealed the ap­point­ments of five judges: Achong, Patrick Ra­bathaly, Vin­cent Cabr­era, Wendy Ali, and Lynette See­baran-Suite had been re­scind­ed.

How­ev­er, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo sub­se­quent­ly agreed to ex­tend the judges’ con­tracts so that the op­er­a­tions of the court would not be af­fect­ed while the Gov­ern­ment re­views the tenures of the judges.

How­ev­er, the unions claimed Kan­ga­loo did not have the au­thor­i­ty to ex­tend the con­tracts with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the unions, which they claimed was re­quired by law.

Ro­get de­scribed the de­ci­sion as a “uni­lat­er­al ac­tion” that dis­re­gard­ed the con­cerns of one of the coun­try’s ma­jor stake­hold­ers in in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions—the trade union move­ment.

“This is one rule for Pe­ter and an­oth­er for Paul,” Ro­get said, claim­ing that ex­cep­tions were made to ben­e­fit in­di­vid­u­als po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned with the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The union leader said Achong, ap­point­ed un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), has been ac­cused by JTUM and NATUC of car­ry­ing out a “frontal at­tack on trade unions and work­ers.”

Ro­get al­so crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, for at­tempt­ing to re­new the con­tracts of the five judges just days be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. He said the in­com­ing Gov­ern­ment right­ly re­scind­ed the Cab­i­net note to al­low for a trans­par­ent re­view.

Ro­get said the labour move­ment has long voiced con­cerns over Achong, who, he claimed, has been at the cen­tre of nu­mer­ous con­tro­ver­sial rul­ings, in­clud­ing:

The Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion case, where Ro­get al­leged that Achong “bul­lied” unions in­to ac­cept­ing a four per cent wage in­crease over six years un­der the threat of a ten-year im­posed agree­ment.

The OW­TU vs T&TEC mat­ter, where Achong al­leged­ly dis­re­gard­ed of­fi­cial ev­i­dence to award work­ers a “ze­ro, ze­ro, ze­ro” in­crease. This rul­ing was lat­er over­turned on ap­peal.

A ju­di­cial re­view won by the PSA against the Spe­cial Tri­bunal’s de­ci­sion to im­pose a 10-year agree­ment—presided over by Achong—which was ul­ti­mate­ly ruled against by the Privy Coun­cil, find­ing the tri­bunal lacked ju­ris­dic­tion.

The 2024 En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency mat­ter, where the Privy Coun­cil crit­i­cised the tri­bunal’s con­duct, not­ing it had “lost sight of im­par­tial­i­ty and neu­tral­i­ty.”

A Cen­tral Bank dis­pute, where, de­spite the bank’s stat­ed abil­i­ty to pay a 9% wage in­crease, Achong ruled in favour of on­ly 6%—a move Ro­get called “vin­dic­tive.”

Ro­get al­so ref­er­enced the un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous re­moval of for­mer In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix in 2023, claim­ing she was dis­missed while abroad, with­out even the cour­tesy of an ex­ten­sion to re­spect­ful­ly com­plete her du­ties.

An­nisette, mean­while, called Achong’s reap­point­ment a “mis­judge­ment,” “in­sen­si­tive and in­con­sid­er­ate.”

“Where is the space for the young, bright, bril­liant lawyers and mag­is­trates? We are say­ing no to sug­ar­coat­ing po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty at the ex­pense of mer­it and jus­tice.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get a re­sponse from Achong but all calls went unan­swered.