Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette says port work­ers have re­turned to their jobs af­ter man­age­ment be­gan ad­dress­ing some of the health and safe­ty con­cerns which trig­gered days of in­de­pen­dent protest ac­tion at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

How­ev­er, An­nisette has re­ject­ed an at­tempt to link the work­ers’ ac­tions to an ex­ist­ing court in­junc­tion against in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ac­tion, ar­gu­ing that em­ploy­ees have a sep­a­rate right to re­move them­selves from con­di­tions they con­sid­er un­safe.

His com­ments came af­ter the union re­ceived a let­ter con­cern­ing the work­ers’ re­cent ac­tion.

An­nisette de­scribed the let­ter as “rather un­for­tu­nate,” say­ing the in­junc­tion ob­tained against the union dealt specif­i­cal­ly with in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ac­tion.

“There is a dis­tinc­tion be­tween in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ac­tions and ac­tions tak­en by work­ers in re­sponse to un­safe or un­healthy work­ing con­di­tions,” he said.

He main­tained that the in­junc­tion did not ap­ply where work­ers be­lieved their health or lives could be com­pro­mised.

An­nisette said the is­sues did not emerge overnight, but had been raised with Port Au­thor­i­ty man­age­ment from as far back as 2024.

The union, he said, had writ­ten man­age­ment out­lin­ing health and safe­ty con­cerns across the Port Au­thor­i­ty, but sev­er­al of those mat­ters re­mained un­re­solved.

The lat­est protest ac­tion fol­lowed com­plaints from work­ers about de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions, in­clud­ing in­ad­e­quate toi­let fa­cil­i­ties, mal­func­tion­ing uri­nals, the ab­sence of prop­er fa­cil­i­ties for fe­male em­ploy­ees, dam­aged lock­ers and rat and pi­geon in­fes­ta­tions.

Work­ers had al­so com­plained that re­peat­ed let­ters to man­age­ment had failed to bring last­ing so­lu­tions.

An­nisette said the work­ers’ ac­tion even­tu­al­ly re­sult­ed in man­age­ment be­gin­ning to ad­dress some of the con­cerns.

“On that ba­sis, I would have ad­vised my team, in or­der to show good faith, that the work­ers re­turn to their jobs,” he said.

He al­so praised Port Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Lyle Alexan­der and his man­age­ment team fol­low­ing a meet­ing on Thurs­day, say­ing he had used the meet­ing to raise the union’s con­cerns about the tone and le­gal in­ter­pre­ta­tion con­tained in the let­ter.

An­nisette said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned that the cor­re­spon­dence ap­peared to con­nect the in­junc­tion with work­ers re­fus­ing to per­form du­ties be­cause of al­leged safe­ty risks.

He re­ferred to pro­vi­sions un­der oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health leg­is­la­tion which, he said, al­low em­ploy­ees to refuse work where they rea­son­ably be­lieve there is a se­ri­ous and im­mi­nent dan­ger to their safe­ty or health.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment fol­lows a week of protest ac­tion by port work­ers, who have in­sist­ed that their ac­tion was in­de­pen­dent­ly un­der­tak­en and was not a strike called by the SWW­TU.

The work­ers are al­so pur­su­ing long­stand­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­cerns, in­clud­ing out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and back­pay, but have main­tained that the im­me­di­ate ac­tion was dri­ven by work­place con­di­tions.

An­nisette said the union would con­tin­ue en­gag­ing man­age­ment to en­sure the out­stand­ing health and safe­ty mat­ters are re­solved.

“The work­ers have re­turned to work, but these mat­ters have been fes­ter­ing for some time,” he said.