Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

0tto.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter more than a month of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion and le­gal dis­pute in­volv­ing port work­ers, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the union rep­re­sent­ing the work­ers met to dis­cuss the on­go­ing is­sues.

Yes­ter­day, the work­ers, led by Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette, gath­ered for dis­cus­sions with the Port Au­thor­i­ty’s ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment.

The union has been at odds with the Port Au­thor­i­ty over wage in­creas­es and pro­pos­als aimed at im­ple­ment­ing best prac­tices at the port.

Speak­ing to the me­dia af­ter the meet­ing, An­nisette de­scribed the dis­cus­sions as fruit­ful, not­ing that the pro­pos­als out­lined in the Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment were be­ing ac­tive­ly con­sid­ered.

“For some strange rea­son, there was an ini­tial un­will­ing­ness to en­gage with the union in good faith. How­ev­er, I be­lieve bet­ter sense is now pre­vail­ing. It seems the man­age­ment of the Port Au­thor­i­ty is be­gin­ning to un­der­stand the pro­pos­als, their im­pli­ca­tions, and what they mean for the Port Au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions in the con­text of the agree­ments we’ve reached,” he said.

“We em­pha­sised that this was an in­ter­est-based ne­go­ti­a­tion, and we re­main com­mit­ted to work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with the man­age­ment, the Gov­ern­ment, the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion, and the cham­bers of com­merce to achieve a tran­si­tion for the port that we can all be proud of.”

The union re­mains adamant that the pro­pos­als in­clud­ed in the Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment, which were pre­vi­ous­ly de­nied by the Gov­ern­ment, are cru­cial for the port’s fu­ture progress.

He fur­ther stat­ed, “On­ly 12 per cent with­in the frame­work agree­ment places us in a po­si­tion where the foun­da­tion is sol­id, al­low­ing the port to kick off mean­ing­ful­ly and be­come im­me­di­ate­ly com­pet­i­tive and pro­duc­tive.”

The work­ers’ in­dus­tri­al ac­tion se­vere­ly dis­rupt­ed port op­er­a­tions, leav­ing many sec­tors of the econ­o­my reel­ing.

How­ev­er, An­nisette em­pha­sised, “If the Gov­ern­ment main­tains the wage of­fer along­side over­time, it means the port will end up pay­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly more in both over­time and wages. The over­time bill al­ready ac­counts for al­most 60 per cent of work­ers’ base salaries. For the life of me and my rep­re­sen­ta­tives, we can­not un­der­stand why the gov­ern­ment fails to see the eco­nom­ic sense in ad­dress­ing this is­sue. The port would ben­e­fit, Trinidad and To­ba­go would ben­e­fit, and, more im­por­tant­ly, we could be­come more com­pet­i­tive in the re­gion­al mar­ket.”

The union did not dis­close the date of the next meet­ing but re­mains op­ti­mistic about fur­ther dis­cus­sions.