Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The labour move­ment is again wag­ing war on the Gov­ern­ment

The three labour fed­er­a­tions met yes­ter­day at a me­dia brief­ing to share their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and the Port of Port-of-Spain.

The union lead­ers de­liv­ered a let­ter to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and WASA’s Di­rec­tor of Cor­po­rate Ser­vices Ald­win Brown.

They claim that the Gov­ern­ment has been mak­ing de­ci­sions and have not in­clud­ed the labour move­ment as they make a de­ci­sion on the jobs of their mem­bers.

The fed­er­a­tion is made up of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment, the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions.

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Union of Fed­er­at­ed and Gov­ern­ment Work­ers James Lam­bert said the is­sue at WASA is get­ting out of hand as the au­thor­i­ty has not re­spond­ed to any of the unions’ let­ters.

He said now that the fed­er­a­tion has writ­ten to WASA he is hop­ing for a re­sponse.

He said, “I in­di­cat­ed to them that there is an ur­gent need to meet and dis­cuss ne­go­ti­a­tions and re­struc­tur­ing plus the non-pay­ment of WASA work­ers based on the rates they nor­mal­ly re­ceive every Christ­mas, which is called the sick leave bonus, and the min­is­ter went and said that he is sur­prised that peo­ple are get­ting sick leave bonus, which part min­is­ter Gon­za­les liv­ing, is it Iraq, is he liv­ing in Spain?, he needs to look at the col­lec­tive agree­ment that is be­ing signed.”

He added that work­ers must be vig­i­lant.

Lam­bert al­so chid­ed the me­dia for not do­ing the prop­er re­search and to stop go­ing in the di­rec­tion of the Gov­ern­ment re­port.

“We are ask­ing for an open fo­rum with both Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les and WASA’s CEO Lennox Sealy where we can sit and dis­cuss, so there­fore we can be able to iden­ti­fy where the in’s are and where the low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is and what is need­ed to boost WASA,” said Lam­bert.

He re­mind­ed WASA work­ers not to be afraid of the Gov­ern­ment and its plans.

Pres­i­dent of Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion Wat­son Duke said the fed­er­a­tion will pro­tect “your nice pay­ing job and more than that we will give to an in­crease.”

He said, “We have seen what they have done to us for far too long and we refuse to fold our arms or be paral­ysed, we are not think­ing care­ful­ly now and we don’t have a much in­tri­cate and de­tailed plan but our plan is to do this to stop the Gov­ern­ment dead in its track. We have come to the con­clu­sion that it is we against them and just in case you don’t know who they are its we against the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment PNM.”

Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union An­cel Ro­get said the non­sense by the Gov­ern­ment must come to an im­me­di­ate halt.

“We have met in closed doors and we had two meet­ings and I can tell you all that these meet­ing among the fed­er­a­tion was very suc­cess­ful as we met to­geth­er to strate­gise and we have tak­en the con­scious de­ci­sion that all of those de­ci­sions and strate­gies go­ing for­ward we will keep that close to our chest, Ro­get said.

“A war has been de­clared on the trade union move­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the trade union move­ment has to re­spond, ab­solute­ly no dis­cus­sion, uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sion was be­ing made by per­sons who called them­selves rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple.”

Pres­i­dent of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union Micheal An­nisette said the labour move­ment is fight­ing for a bet­ter day “for me and you.”