Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Lead Ed­i­tor Pol­i­tics

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas is strong­ly re­ject­ing claims that her union is re­ceiv­ing pref­er­en­tial treat­ment from the Gov­ern­ment af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar or­dered the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of T&T (NIBTT) to pay out­stand­ing ar­rears to work­ers.

Claims of favouritism were raised by Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Bri­an Man­ning and the Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU). They ar­gue that Fri­day’s an­nounce­ment in Par­lia­ment, which is ex­pect­ed to cost the State rough­ly $100 mil­lion, amounts to po­lit­i­cal pay­back for the PSA’s sup­port of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Man­ning went fur­ther, claim­ing the PSA will now be de­nied its promised 10 per cent salary in­crease in the up­com­ing fi­nan­cial year, as he be­lieves the move to pay NIBTT work­ers was in­tend­ed to ap­pease the union ahead of that dis­ap­point­ment.

Mak­ing a state­ment in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar di­rect­ed the NIBTT to pay out­stand­ing 2014–2016 ar­rears to the PSA-rep­re­sent­ed work­ers, ben­e­fit­ing 950 em­ploy­ees. The NIBTT im­me­di­ate­ly put out a state­ment com­mit­ting to mak­ing pay­ments by the end of this month.

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day the San Fer­nan­do East MP told Guardian Me­dia that the Gov­ern­ment can­not pay its bills but is us­ing funds to “pa­tro­n­ise” its sup­port­ers.

“What they’re do­ing here is pay­ing these small­er pay­ments so that they won’t have to keep their ridicu­lous cam­paign promise of a 10 per cent in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants,” Man­ning claimed.

The for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter main­tains that it is fis­cal­ly un­fea­si­ble for the Gov­ern­ment to fund salary in­creas­es that could cost over $10 bil­lion.

He be­lieves that when that promise does not ma­te­ri­alise, the PSA will break away from its al­liance with the Gov­ern­ment.

Man­ning said he found the PM di­rec­tive to the NIBTT on Fri­day “ex­treme­ly strange”. He added that Gov­ern­ment came in the mid-year bud­get re­view and asked for ad­di­tion­al funds for CEPEP and URP and since sev­er­al of those work­ers have now been fired, he’s ques­tion­ing if that mon­ey went to pay­ing NIBTT work­ers.

“It was sim­ply a cost-sav­ing method or mea­sure, sor­ry, so that they can take those funds that they have and sat­is­fy their sup­port­ers or their cronies with­in the par­ty.”

Mean­while, the Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union pres­i­dent Don De­venish told Guardian Me­dia that while he has no is­sue with the PSA be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned, the NIBTT de­vel­op­ment is a clear case of po­lit­i­cal pay­back.

“With­out the PSA, they couldn’t win the elec­tions. I mean, when you come with a promise to get 10 per cent, who is not go­ing to vote for you if, with the oth­er side, you know you will get 4 per cent? Noth­ing wrong with what the PSA did to ex­ploit the sit­u­a­tion to get the best for the mem­bers. But they’ve giv­en PSA every­thing be­cause it’s pay­back time. PSA helped them to win.”

Con­trary to Man­ning’s claims of the source of funds to sat­is­fy the back­pay, the BIG­WU pres­i­dent said the NIBTT al­ways had that mon­ey put aside for the back­pay, and there­fore, the Gov­ern­ment’s or­der that the mon­ey be re­leased is “no big favour”.

In its 2024 An­nu­al Re­port, the NIBTT list­ed a pro­vi­sion of $186.94 mil­lion un­der Con­tin­gent Li­a­bil­i­ties and Cap­i­tal Com­mit­ments to cov­er wage ne­go­ti­a­tions up to June 2024. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that not all of this sum is ear­marked for the ar­rears men­tioned by the PM.

De­venish said it was now time for “eq­ui­ty” with the oth­er unions.

“We have out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions. We have at CARIRI, we have at the EMA that these work­ers are still wait­ing, and it’s at the Min­istry of Labour, and the em­ploy­er is say­ing they still are wait­ing for in­struc­tions from the Gov­ern­ment.”

But the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) said it was too ear­ly in the Gov­ern­ment’s term to make any claims of favouritism.

How­ev­er, he is urg­ing the Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion to now fo­cus on what is owed to port work­ers.

“It is on­ly fear, and it’s on­ly right now that the port work­ers, the dock work­ers, the port em­ploy­ees are paid the 12 per cent which was ne­go­ti­at­ed.”

In 2015, the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment and the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) agreed to a 12 per cent wage in­crease and port re­forms, but the PNM gov­ern­ment re­fused to ho­n­our it, claim­ing the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) was not in­volved and had of­fered a small­er raise, which was re­ject­ed by the union.

Thomas fires back

But the PSA pres­i­dent did not hold back while re­spond­ing to Man­ning’s claims.

Thomas told Guardian Me­dia, “Tell Bri­an Man­ning he could fi­nal­ly sit back and learn how to man­age the fi­nances of our coun­try. For the pe­ri­od he has been in of­fice, he has been silent. He should con­tin­ue to be silent now. There is no fric­tion be­tween the PSA and the oth­er unions. We re­main in sol­i­dar­i­ty. We re­main strong.”

She al­so said she was “sure” the Gov­ern­ment would ho­n­our its 10 per cent in­crease promise.

“They de­liv­ered on TTRA, they de­liv­ered on WASA, and they have now de­liv­ered on NIB. I am quite con­fi­dent that they will de­liv­er on the 10 per cent. I have no doubt about that.”

The PSA pres­i­dent said sat­is­fy­ing a court or­der can­not be seen as favouritism.

Trade dis­pute mat­ter in court this week

The PSA and NIBTT man­age­ment agreed on a 9 per cent wage in­crease and re­vised CO­LA for 2014–2016, fi­nalised in Oc­to­ber 2020 and reg­is­tered with the In­dus­tri­al Court.

Al­though the col­lec­tive agree­ment be­came legal­ly bind­ing, work­ers did not re­ceive their wage in­creas­es or back pay be­cause the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (Colm Im­bert) blocked pay­ment, cit­ing that NIBTT’s bud­get, in­clud­ing the in­creas­es, had not been ap­proved.

The PSA filed a trade dis­pute over NIBTT’s fail­ure to pay agreed wage in­creas­es. In March 2022, the In­dus­tri­al Court dis­missed the com­plaint, rul­ing that NIBTT act­ed in good faith and in­tend­ed to pay but could not do so with­out Min­istry of Fi­nance bud­get ap­proval, so no in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence oc­curred.

While the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Of­fence was dis­missed the trade dis­pute is still ac­tive and is ex­pect­ed to come be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court this week.