Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Frus­trat­ed over stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, Port-of-Spain dock­work­ers have be­gun in­de­pen­dent protests out­side the port and plan to keep demon­strat­ing, while rul­ing out strike ac­tion.

Work­ers’ spokesper­son Stephen Joseph said em­ploy­ees or­gan­ised the protest them­selves, sep­a­rate from the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU).

“No, we’re not here on the union’s part. We are here as em­ploy­ees, dis­grun­tled em­ploy­ees,” Joseph told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

He said their de­ci­sion to protest in­de­pen­dent­ly was in­tend­ed to high­light work­ers’ frus­tra­tion and was not a protest against the union.

He said work­ers want­ed man­age­ment to meet with the SWW­TU to set­tle the out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“The union has been lob­by­ing for it. But we just de­cid­ed to step away to show that it’s not just about the union, it’s about em­ploy­ees. It’s the em­ploy­ees, it’s the work­ers.”

Joseph ruled out strike ac­tion, cit­ing an ex­ist­ing court in­junc­tion.

“We have an in­junc­tion at the court, so we can’t, and we won’t be tak­ing any in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. We won’t.”

SWW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette, com­ment­ing sep­a­rate­ly on the work­ers’ con­cerns, said em­ploy­ees were still earn­ing 2014 salaries in 2026.

He said the union had writ­ten to man­age­ment twice with­out re­ceiv­ing an ac­knowl­edge­ment.

Ef­forts to con­tact line min­is­ter Jear­lean John for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.

Joseph said work­ers had grown tired of ex­changes be­tween man­age­ment and the union that had failed to de­liv­er a set­tle­ment.

Al­though port work­ers had tak­en the ini­tia­tive to demon­strate, he stressed that ne­go­ti­a­tions re­mained the union’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“We want di­a­logue with the union. They can’t come to us; they have to go to the union. So we want di­a­logue with the union to get this over and done with.”

An­nisette said the work­ers’ frus­tra­tion was un­der­stand­able, giv­en the length of time their wage con­cerns had re­mained un­re­solved.

He said work­ers per­form­ing com­pa­ra­ble du­ties at Point Lisas, in­clud­ing op­er­at­ing gantry cranes, trac­tors and fork­lifts, earned ap­prox­i­mate­ly 34 per cent more than their coun­ter­parts at Port-of-Spain.

The union, he said, had pro­posed us­ing Point Lisas wages as a bench­mark to set­tle all out­stand­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments. He said that pro­pos­al had been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the Gov­ern­ment, the port’s chair­man and board, and man­age­ment.

An­nisette ac­cused the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, which took of­fice in 2015, of hav­ing “kicked the can down the road” on the dis­pute.

He said he had con­tin­ued seek­ing a res­o­lu­tion through ver­bal rep­re­sen­ta­tions, What­sApp mes­sages and for­mal cor­re­spon­dence.

He al­so al­leged that se­ri­ous health and safe­ty con­cerns re­mained un­re­solved, in­clud­ing rats and drop­pings in a work­ers’ shel­ter.

De­spite those con­di­tions, he said, em­ploy­ees con­tin­ued work­ing to en­sure mem­bers of the pub­lic re­ceived bar­rels and oth­er goods.