Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Shut­down the coun­try.

That’s a call from the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre along with dai­ly rat­ed work­ers’ unions in T&T as they re­ject the of­fer by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) of two per cent over an eight-year ne­go­ti­a­tion pe­ri­od.

On Thurs­day, the CPO of­fered the unions for the fol­low­ing years 2014 – 0 per cent, 2015 – 0, 2016 – 0, 2017 – 0, 2018 – 1, 2019 – 0, 2020 – 0 and 2021 – 1 per cent and this is not sit­ting well with the labour lead­ers.

“To­day we are say­ing to shut­down the damn coun­try, that is the on­ly way we will make the Gov­ern­ment come to their sens­es be­cause enough is enough and we can­not con­tin­ue to ac­cept the present op­pres­sive­ness that is be­ing laid on the work­ing class,” Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) and Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) pres­i­dent James Lam­bert said.

He added: “The Fi­nance Min­is­ter has mocked us and said that he raised gas prices four times and they ain’t ri­ot yet and to­day the very same said peo­ple who have to car­ry out your man­date you have now place us in a po­si­tion to make us worse than how we were be­fore and you ex­pect us to go with a smile on our faces.”

He not­ed that what is be­ing of­fered for dai­ly rat­ed work­ers is a $2 in­crease per day and the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers this to be rea­son­able.

Lam­bert added that the union took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the cur­rent eco­nom­ic crunch that the coun­try is fac­ing due to the pan­dem­ic and oth­er eco­nom­ic ef­fects and would have tak­en off the ta­ble Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowances (CO­LA) to al­low the Gov­ern­ment to be able to ful­fil its man­date to as­sist the work­ers but the gov­ern­ment has used this against the work­ing class with this of­fer.

Amalgamated Workers Union president, Michael Prentice, addresses members of the media during yesterday’s press conference.

KERWIN PIERRE

Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union pres­i­dent, Michael Pren­tice, who rep­re­sents san­i­ta­tion work­ers in the pub­lic sec­tor, made a clar­i­on call to the Gov­ern­ment and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

He said, “We as the work­ing class are al­ways asked to bear the bur­den of prob­lems in the econ­o­my we did it in 1986, and I want to send a mes­sage to Colm Im­bert, I don’t give a damn about you be­cause you don’t give a damn about me and the work­ers, and since you are demon­strat­ing this lev­el of gross dis­re­spect and in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty to­wards the work­ing class against the coun­try, all the work­ing class should adopt the same ap­proach to you whether you and your team or the in­di­vid­u­als who com­piled this doc­u­ment and it don’t worth the price of a roll of toi­let pa­per and you are telling me in the 20th cen­tu­ry you are of­fer­ing ze­ro, ze­ro, ze­ro.”

The unions are lead­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers in the cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ment and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

Pren­tice added, “just as you the gov­ern­ment went and bor­row mon­ey and we the work­ing class have to pay it back go and bor­row the damn mon­ey and pay the damn work­ers.”

Al­so speak­ing for dai­ly rat­ed work­ers, was the Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union pres­i­dent Er­mine De Bique.

She said, “In this col­lec­tive agree­ment they have of­fered us 15 cents and gas has in­creased four times dur­ing this col­lec­tive agree­ment, so what are they telling us that they don’t care but this fin­ger care, so when we go to the polls we mark our x and then we use this fin­ger to dip in the ink.”

The unions are meet­ing to strate­gies their ac­tion for the day of the shut­down.

All the dai­ly rat­ed unions are ex­pect­ed to go be­fore the CPO on June 15.

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