Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) is prepar­ing to take the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) to the In­dus­tri­al Court over the ter­mi­na­tion of 124 dai­ly-paid work­ers, which it says was un­law­ful and breached good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices.

NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al Christo­pher Streete said yes­ter­day that the union planned to file an In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Of­fence (IRO) com­plaint lat­er this week, af­ter at­tempts to re­solve the dis­pute through dis­cus­sions with the health au­thor­i­ty failed.

Streete said the union would pur­sue le­gal re­dress for the af­fect­ed work­ers, al­though the SWRHA main­tains that its ac­tions were law­ful.

“The union, in de­fence of those work­ers who, in our view, were il­le­gal­ly ter­mi­nat­ed, would be fil­ing an IRO with the In­dus­tri­al Court seek­ing re­dress for those work­ers,” Streete said.

He said the union had tried to en­gage the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties but had been un­able to reach agree­ment on the le­gal­i­ty of the ter­mi­na­tions.

“We would have at­tempt­ed to have con­ver­sa­tions with the pow­ers that be, and they are in­sist­ing that the ter­mi­na­tions were law­ful. We have an op­pos­ing view,” he said.

Streete said the In­dus­tri­al Court would now be asked to de­ter­mine whether the SWRHA act­ed law­ful­ly and in keep­ing with good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices.

The dis­pute cen­tres on ter­mi­na­tion let­ters dat­ed Oc­to­ber 15, in­form­ing 124 dai­ly-paid em­ploy­ees that their ser­vices were no longer re­quired.

The de­ci­sion caused un­cer­tain­ty among work­ers at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and oth­er SWRHA fa­cil­i­ties. Sev­er­al em­ploy­ees re­port­ed­ly con­tin­ued to re­port for du­ty af­ter re­ceiv­ing the no­tices. Some were pre­vent­ed from work­ing and es­cort­ed from the hos­pi­tal com­pound by se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel as they sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion about their em­ploy­ment sta­tus.

The sit­u­a­tion lat­er took an­oth­er turn when re­ports emerged that the let­ters had been re­called and the work­ers al­lowed to re­turn to du­ty.

NUGFW South­ern Di­vi­sion pres­i­dent Ja­son Gor­don had ear­li­er said Streete re­ceived as­sur­ances from SWRHA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr She­vanand Gopeesingh that the let­ters would be re­scind­ed. Gor­don said, how­ev­er, that some work­ers ini­tial­ly en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties when try­ing to re­turn to their de­part­ments.

The union has ques­tioned why dai­ly-paid work­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed when sev­er­al hos­pi­tal de­part­ments were al­ready fac­ing staffing chal­lenges. It has said em­ploy­ees per­form­ing es­sen­tial du­ties, in­clud­ing laun­dry and oth­er sup­port ser­vices, are crit­i­cal to the op­er­a­tion of pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions.

NUGFW branch chair­man Roger Roach pre­vi­ous­ly warned that re­duced staffing could put ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on re­main­ing em­ploy­ees and af­fect hos­pi­tal ser­vices.

The un­cer­tain­ty has al­so raised con­cerns about work­ers’ fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty. Car­la Black­man, a tum­bler op­er­a­tor and moth­er of three, pub­licly ex­pressed con­cern about pro­vid­ing for her chil­dren af­ter re­ceiv­ing a ter­mi­na­tion no­tice. She ap­pealed for in­ter­ven­tion, say­ing the sit­u­a­tion had placed con­sid­er­able emo­tion­al and fi­nan­cial pres­sure on her fam­i­ly.

The union has al­so ques­tioned whether there was ad­e­quate con­sul­ta­tion be­fore the let­ters were is­sued.

The SWRHA is re­spon­si­ble for sev­er­al ma­jor pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties in south­ern Trinidad, in­clud­ing San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal.

Al­though re­ports say the af­fect­ed work­ers have re­sumed du­ty, the union is seek­ing re­dress over the au­thor­i­ty’s orig­i­nal de­ci­sion and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the dis­missals. The le­gal­i­ty of the ter­mi­na­tions re­mains dis­put­ed, and the In­dus­tri­al Court has not yet made a de­ter­mi­na­tion.

NATUC de­mands re­in­state­ment of 40 SWRHA work­ers

The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) has called for the im­me­di­ate re­in­state­ment of about 40 South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) work­ers, say­ing no gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tion is above the coun­try’s labour laws.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, NATUC Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette con­demned the ter­mi­na­tions and ex­pressed the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s sup­port for the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW).

NATUC said about 124 work­ers were ini­tial­ly af­fect­ed, but that num­ber was re­port­ed­ly re­duced to 40 fol­low­ing the NUGFW’s in­ter­ven­tion.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion crit­i­cised what it de­scribed as a fail­ure to con­sult mean­ing­ful­ly with the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union be­fore the work­ers were sent home.

“No gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tion, statu­to­ry board or state en­ter­prise is above the law!” NATUC said.

It called on the Gov­ern­ment, the Health Min­is­ter and the SWRHA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer to in­ter­vene ur­gent­ly, re­scind the re­main­ing ter­mi­na­tion let­ters and meet with the union.

NATUC al­so called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to out­stand­ing wages and over­time pay­ments, and for an ex­am­i­na­tion of whether the rel­e­vant pro­vi­sions of the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act had been fol­lowed.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion warned that dis­miss­ing work­ers amid ris­ing liv­ing costs could push fam­i­lies in­to greater fi­nan­cial hard­ship.

“Work­ers are hu­man be­ings, not dis­pos­able com­modi­ties!” it said.

NATUC said the State must lead by ex­am­ple by re­spect­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments and pro­tect­ing work­ers’ rights.

“The Gov­ern­ment can­not ex­pect pri­vate em­ploy­ers to re­spect labour laws while pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions fail to set the ex­am­ple!” it added.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said it would con­tin­ue to sup­port the af­fect­ed work­ers un­til a fair res­o­lu­tion was reached.