KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Work­ers Union (TTP­WU) has giv­en Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al one week to im­ple­ment the fi­nal re­port of a job eval­u­a­tion for 46 po­si­tions with­in TTPOST.

The eval­u­a­tion was com­plet­ed in 2011 and in­cludes rec­om­men­da­tions for an 18.6 per cent in­crease in salaries for hun­dreds of TTPOST work­ers.

The union al­so con­demned Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les for re­main­ing mum and ig­nor­ing their con­cerns.

How­ev­er, both Gon­za­les and a TTPOST ex­ec­u­tive said yes­ter­day they aren’t the ones to blame or turn to, as salary ne­go­ti­a­tions are the sole do­main of the CPO.

With the sup­port of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), dozens of TTPOST work­ers gath­ered out­side the CPO of­fice af­ter de­liv­er­ing a let­ter to him yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to TTP­WU gen­er­al sec­re­tary David Forbes, yes­ter­day’s ac­tions were trig­gered by the pro­pos­al of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) for in­creas­es of over 30 per cent for the Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader, while its work­ers labour tire­less­ly but are con­stant­ly ig­nored.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side the CPO’s of­fice on Alexan­dra Street, Port-of-Spain, Forbes said, “We are not be­ing tak­en on by the Gov­ern­ment. We are not be­ing tak­en on by the CPO and it is a to­tal dis­re­gard for postal work­ers. Postal work­ers have be­come very up­set and an­noyed.”

He added, “It is on­ly fair, it is on­ly just that what is good for one, is good for all. Be­cause if they go and ap­prove this Salaries Re­view (Com­mis­sion) re­port in the Par­lia­ment, def­i­nite­ly the Gov­ern­ment has to un­der­stand that work­ers will not sit idly by. In fact, the postal work­ers will not sit idly by and just let this is­sue slide by. We def­i­nite­ly are not go­ing to ac­cept that at all, at all, at all!”

Ac­cus­ing Gon­za­les of ig­nor­ing the plight of work­ers, Forbes called his si­lence a dis­re­spect.

Ac­cord­ing to Forbes, the union has al­so sent sev­er­al cor­re­spon­dence to Gon­za­les’ of­fice but are yet to re­ceive an ac­knowl­edge­ment.

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to Gon­za­les, he said, “The Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties has no le­gal au­thor­i­ty to in­ter­fere or in­flu­ence the terms and con­di­tions of work­ers, in­clud­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions. That’s the sole do­main of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer. I am cer­tain that the union rep­re­sent­ing the work­ers are ful­ly aware of that fact.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, one TTPOST ex­ec­u­tive, who asked to re­main anony­mous, al­so not­ed that man­age­ment has no po­si­tion on the mat­ter at hand be­cause the CPO and the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties were the ones to make an of­fer for salary ne­go­ti­a­tions to take place.

The of­fi­cial al­so ex­pressed con­cern af­ter see­ing videos of work­ers who had signed in for work yes­ter­day, on­ly to “dis­ap­pear” with­out per­mis­sion be­fore be­ing seen protest­ing out­side the CPO’s of­fice.

Asked if the com­pa­ny had any con­tin­gency plans if work­ers dis­rupt op­er­a­tions if they do not get a re­sponse from the CPO, the of­fi­cial said should this oc­cur, there will be a con­tin­gency plan in place.

How­ev­er, the ex­ec­u­tive as­sured that at present it was busi­ness as usu­al at TTPOST.