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.