KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) is deny­ing claims made by port work­ers that it is still re­ceiv­ing aid from mil­i­tary per­son­nel.

While trade unions con­tin­ue to call for port of­fi­cials to stop the use of mil­i­tary force to con­duct ac­tiv­i­ties done by civil­ian port work­ers, port au­thor­i­ty chair­man Colonel (re­tired) Lyle Alexan­der said the mat­ter was “al­ready closed.”

Alexan­der con­firmed that mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) were called in to help af­ter port work­ers staged a walk­out weeks ago. Some work­ers staged a small­er protest out­side the port this month as well. Work­ers have been protest­ing over sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and health and safe­ty con­cerns such as rats and pi­geon drop­pings.

Work­ers were fur­ther up­set af­ter the TTDF were be­ing used to of­fload con­tain­ers. In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) and the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) said this was “egre­gious vi­o­la­tions of dock­work­ers' rights.”

The union said the de­ploy­ment of mil­i­tary per­son­nel to of­fload car­go at the port has raised sig­nif­i­cant alarm among dock­work­ers, who view this as a di­rect threat to their jobs and a breach of their rights. SWW­TU Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al Michael An­nisette al­so raised this is­sue while at­tend­ing the 46th Con­gress of the In­ter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion in Mo­roc­co re­cent­ly. How­ev­er, Alexan­der told Guardian Me­dia that mem­bers of the TTDF were called in for one pur­pose, but they are no longer at the port. He said that was a one-time oc­cur­rence. In ad­di­tion to health and safe­ty con­cerns, NATUC is al­so call­ing out the Gov­ern­ment for its al­leged “vi­o­la­tion” of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments. In the re­lease, the union said the Gov­ern­ment had un­der­mined the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process by fail­ing to ho­n­our a 12 per cent wage agree­ment ne­go­ti­at­ed for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2017. In­stead, the union said PATT had been di­rect­ed to pay on­ly two per cent, dis­re­gard­ing the mu­tu­al­ly agreed terms.