Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste has clar­i­fied that the $2.8 bil­lion be­ing sought by the Gov­ern­ment in the mid-year bud­get re­view is in­tend­ed to fund salary in­creas­es for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers whose unions have al­ready con­clud­ed wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, and not for new salary set­tle­ments.

And ac­cord­ing to the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO), the funds will be used to ho­n­our agree­ments reached with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union and the Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union (CGW­TU).

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last Fri­day said that 62,050 work­ers would ben­e­fit from the sup­ple­men­ta­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that, aside from the PSA and NUGFW, which agreed to ten per cent in­creas­es, the oth­er unions signed five per cent agree­ments with the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

PSA and TTUTA mem­bers are al­ready re­ceiv­ing their new salaries.

CPO Dr Daryl Din­di­al said the mon­ey will cov­er work­ers from the PSA, NUGFW and CGW­TU for ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods 2014-2016 and 2017-2019.

“The rest are 2020 and 2022. TTUTA has a strad­dle year, so 2020-2023.”

A strad­dle year or strad­dle pe­ri­od in wage ne­go­ti­a­tions refers to a fis­cal year that is split across two dif­fer­ent wage agree­ment pe­ri­ods.

Seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the is­sue, Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day sent ques­tions to Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste ask­ing which unions rep­re­sent the 62,050 work­ers ref­er­enced, whether the $2.8 bil­lion is in­tend­ed to set­tle wage agree­ments al­ready con­clud­ed and whether the al­lo­ca­tion will cov­er both re­vised salaries and out­stand­ing back­pay.

He re­spond­ed, “I wouldn’t want to com­ment on the ex­act maths, but sure­ly it’s re­spect to agree­ments al­ready ar­rived at and meet­ing those oblig­a­tions.”

Asked specif­i­cal­ly if this meant the al­ready signed ten per cent in­creas­es for PSA and NUGFW mem­bers, as well as the TTUTA five per cent agree­ment, Bap­tiste re­spond­ed, “I haven’t dis­cussed or con­firmed with the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, but yes, it ap­pears so. It has to do with meet­ing in­creas­es re­sult­ing from those agree­ments.”

How­ev­er, it seems as if the al­lo­ca­tion does not in­clude em­ploy­ees of the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs), who, de­spite be­ing PSA mem­bers, were not cov­ered un­der the union’s ten per cent wage agree­ment signed on De­cem­ber 2, 2025.

Guardian Me­dia asked Min­is­ter Bap­tiste for clar­i­ty on that; how­ev­er, he did not re­spond.

But Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that the $2.8 bil­lion will not be for those health work­ers who are al­so PSA mem­bers be­cause their ne­go­ti­a­tions have not been set­tled.

PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas was con­tact­ed for a state­ment, ask­ing for an up­date on those ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Thomas replied, “The PSA has com­plet­ed dis­cus­sions in re­la­tion to our sub­mis­sions on the ten per cent pro­pos­al for all Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties. Our last fol­low-up on the progress of the pro­pos­al, it was in­di­cat­ed that all RHA’s com­plet­ed their cal­cu­la­tions rel­a­tive to the month­ly re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture re­quired for new salaries and cal­cu­la­tions re­lat­ed to out­stand­ing ar­rears. These cal­cu­la­tions have been sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Health to be trans­mit­ted to the Hu­man Re­source Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee.”

She then added, “Giv­en the state­ment made by the Prime Min­is­ter on Fri­day, it is our ex­pec­ta­tion that the PSA will re­ceive in­struc­tions on the set­tle­ment of salaries af­ter the mid-year re­view.”

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia told Thomas about the in­for­ma­tion re­ceived that RHA work­ers out­side of those ben­e­fit­ted from the De­cem­ber 2 agree­ment with the CPO will not ben­e­fit from the $2.8 bil­lion.

“I will seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the mat­ter,” Thomas replied.

The ex­clu­sion of RHA work­ers from the ten per cent PSA agree­ment stems from a le­gal sep­a­ra­tion of em­ploy­ers.

While the CPO ne­go­ti­ates on be­half of the cen­tral civ­il ser­vice, RHA per­son­nel are em­ployed by dis­tinct statu­to­ry bod­ies gov­erned un­der the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties Act.

Con­se­quent­ly, wage agree­ments se­cured for min­is­te­r­i­al pub­lic ser­vants do not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late or ap­ply to RHA staff.

In­stead, sep­a­rate col­lec­tive agree­ments must be in­de­pen­dent­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed and signed be­tween the recog­nised unions and the re­spec­tive RHA boards be­fore any match­ing salary ad­just­ments can be im­ple­ment­ed.

One RHA work­er at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, ex­pressed her frus­tra­tion over the en­tire mat­ter.

“This is mid-year bud­get re­view, and we are hear­ing now that we are not on the list to re­ceive any in­crease in salary and mon­ey. We want to know why we are pay­ing PSA dues. Are we chil­dren of the union, or are we stepchil­dren of the union? Be­cause now it is un­fair and dis­re­spect­ful.”

The work­er claimed that her col­leagues are strug­gling to get reg­u­lar up­dates from the PSA ex­ec­u­tive re­gard­ing their ne­go­ti­a­tions.

She said they were last told that monies would be paid by March 2026.

“March gone, April gone, May gone, and we en­tered June.”