The labour move­ment is now one.

The three lo­cal fed­er­a­tions, the Joint Trade Union Move­ment led by Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) Pres­i­dent, An­cil Ro­get, the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­ter led by Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent, Wat­son Duke and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions by Pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my joined to­geth­er as one ac­cord to fight against the gov­ern­ment.

The fed­er­a­tions com­prise all trade unions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Our de­ci­sion is clear, all the fed­er­a­tions would agree with all the rep­re­sen­ta­tives that we are not go­ing to par­tic­i­pate any longer in any form, shape or fash­ion in Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil (NTAC) and I want the pub­lic to un­der­stand it’s with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. We can no longer con­tin­ue in a so­ci­ety where we set up com­mit­tees but the com­mit­tee is for pub­lic re­la­tions pur­pos­es, for peo­ple to look good and the busi­ness of our peo­ple is put on the back burn­er,” said NATUC Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Michael An­nisette.

The de­ci­sion to unite came af­ter Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert told the Sen­ate that Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board man­age­ment has been called up­on to ex­plain why it did not in­form NIB’s Board of a non-au­tho­ri­sa­tion di­rec­tive giv­en by the Fi­nance Min­istry in March 2011 con­cern­ing a col­lec­tive agree­ment.

He said if the wage in­crease con­tem­plat­ed by the agree­ment was in the pub­lic sec­tor, it would cost $7 bil­lion and cause tremen­dous ex­pense for tax­pay­ers.

This has an­gered labour lead­ers, with the PSA leader ac­cus­ing the Fi­nance Min­is­ter of pro­vok­ing work­ers.

But yes­ter­day An­nisette hailed the unit­ed stance as a his­toric day.

“From the bot­tom of my heart, I want to thank every one of you for show­ing the wis­dom for putting Trinidad and To­ba­go first and for­get­ting all of our egos and our dif­fer­ences and com­ing to­geth­er in a unit­ed front to save Trinidad and To­ba­go from a cer­tain group of peo­ple who be­lieve that it was on­ly they must ben­e­fit in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

The new fed­er­a­tion was formed this week af­ter a high pow­ered meet­ing among labour lead­ers.

JTUM Chair­man Ro­get said the unit­ed force was ready to de­fend work­ers.

“They have com­mu­ni­cat­ed clear­ly to us in the trade union move­ment that the storm of at­tack that they are bring­ing to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go by their de­ci­sions, the heartache, the pain they are bring­ing to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, they have had us recog­nise the on­ly way to deal with that is not by in­di­vid­ual trade unions or in­di­vid­ual fed­er­a­tions, but by com­ing to­geth­er. So for that, we thank them this morn­ing for bring­ing us to deal with the rag­ing storm,” he said.

The NATUC leader Duke added that the fed­er­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to start con­sul­ta­tion on Fri­day but said it is ready.

“They try earnest­ly to make us look in­com­pe­tent and im­po­tent but to­day is a day for uni­fi­ca­tion, to­day is a day is when the hatch­et is not just buried it is de­stroyed and we have turned the met­al and burned the met­al in­to swords and shields that we would use to de­fend and fight for the work­ing class.”