Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

With the crowd chant­i­ng “war, war,” Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent, Leroy Bap­tiste, sound­ed the bat­tle cry from the plat­form at Char­lie King Junc­tion dur­ing Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in Fyz­abad on Mon­day.

“Row­ley must go! We not ac­cept­ing four per cent,” shout­ed trade union mem­bers.

Bap­tiste not­ed that noth­ing has changed in terms of is­sues fac­ing work­ers since last year’s Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions.

“Grid your­self and fight like nev­er be­fore,” he in­struct­ed his green-jer­sey clad mem­bers.

Equat­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion fac­ing pub­lic ser­vants to the days of slav­ery, he said the slaves have been re­placed by pub­lic of­fi­cers and es­sen­tial work­ers, while the in­den­tured ser­vants by all oth­er work­ers.

He added that slaves and colo­nial mas­ters had been re­placed with the priv­i­leged-class, the rul­ing class and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, while the house ne­groes were the man­age­r­i­al-class.

Urg­ing work­ers to fight for their free­dom, he said the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act and Civ­il Ser­vice Act are tools used to shack­le work­ers.

He com­plained that judges and the chair­man of the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion and the Spe­cial Tri­bunal of the In­dus­tri­al Court are State-ap­point­ed.”

This Gov­ern­ment, in its quest to keep us en­slaved and de­stroy or­gan­ised labour and the trade union move­ment, has weaponised the IRA and CSA, re­sult­ing in pub­lic of­fi­cers be­ing made spec­ta­tors of their own demise. They can­not lift a fin­ger in de­fence of their jobs,” Bap­tiste claimed.

Warn­ing that the coun­try is go­ing down a precipice at full speed, Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), leader An­cel Ro­get, called on cit­i­zens not to be race-bait­ed but con­sid­er giv­ing an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty a chance to serve.

“As long as you con­tin­ue to guar­an­tee them a vote bank to re­tain pow­er, they will con­tin­ue to use that pow­er against you. It is clear that you have ab­solute­ly noth­ing to gain by giv­ing them your vote every three years or every five years. Just re­mem­ber not every­body that looks like you is for you, and there­fore do not al­low them to con­ve­nient­ly use race to your dis­ad­van­tage. Af­ter get­ting your votes they have al­ways sold you out and they will just con­tin­ue to sell you out,” he warned.

Stress­ing that the trade union move­ment is com­mit­ted to res­cu­ing the coun­try, he said the unions in­tend to meet with peo­ple in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties to hear their con­cerns and ad­dress is­sues fac­ing the coun­try.

Hon­ing in on the theme of their cel­e­bra­tions, “Peo­ple Pow­er, Peo­ple Mat­ter,” Ro­get called on cit­i­zens to join their na­tion­al strug­gle to res­cue the coun­try.

He said, “While we may have many dif­fer­ences, we have one com­mon en­e­my.”

Ro­get al­so called for an in­crease in min­i­mum wages from $17.50 to $30 a hour.

Ad­dress­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders, rob­beries and oth­er gun-re­lat­ed crimes, he said, “The coun­try is now un­der siege where cit­i­zens are lit­er­al­ly liv­ing in grip­ping fear, where peo­ple be­lieve that any minute they can be a vic­tim of a se­ri­ous crime or mur­der.”

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette warned that they would fight against the in­clu­sion of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion ed­u­ca­tion in the na­tion­al school cur­ricu­lum.