Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste de­clared war on the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) at Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions yes­ter­day and said the union plans to work with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to form a new gov­ern­ment.

“Do you agree that we should en­gage the UNC in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions and ne­go­ti­a­tions? Com­rades, I know that is hard be­cause I know some peo­ple have nev­er said UNC in their lives. I un­der­stand that,” he told crowds gath­ered at Char­lie King Junc­tion, Fyz­abad.

Bap­tiste ac­cused the PNM of not en­gag­ing trade unions in ne­go­ti­a­tions and said the PSA can­not ne­go­ti­ate with the Gov­ern­ment, it should start dis­cussing plans with the next gov­ern­ment.

Bap­tiste, who mount­ed the plat­form at the Labour Day ral­ly to chants of “Vote them out!” from PSA mem­bers, not­ed that 2025 was right around the cor­ner, and based on the at­ten­dance yes­ter­day, they could make and break a gov­ern­ment.

Chants of “Row­ley must go” fol­lowed this state­ment.

While JTUM said it would work with all po­lit­i­cal par­ties, in­clud­ing the UNC, to oust the PNM, Bap­tiste en­dorsed the UNC say­ing: “The en­e­my of my en­e­my is my friend.”

There were some shocked re­ac­tions in the crowd and on stage to the PSA leader’s state­ments.

Bap­tiste claimed the last time the PSA got a 14 per cent wage in­crease was un­der a UNC-led gov­ern­ment and claimed the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion wants to ab­solve it­self of its fail­ure to ad­dress the scourge of crime and trans­fer that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and blame to par­ents.

He added that there is a cor­re­la­tion be­tween pover­ty and crime and if the Gov­ern­ment wants to re­duce crime, it must ad­dress work­ing-class is­sues, en­sur­ing par­ents have good-pay­ing jobs that al­low them to af­ford ad­e­quate shel­ter and food on their ta­ble. He said the Gov­ern­ment must en­sure work­ing-class par­ents’ salaries can sus­tain the shocks of in­fla­tion so they can main­tain a stan­dard of liv­ing.

Re­spond­ing to Row­ley’s com­ments that he was dis­ap­point­ed with PSA lead­er­ship for tak­ing the TTRA mat­ter to the Privy Coun­cil, Bap­tiste said the Gov­ern­ment nev­er en­gaged the union on the is­sue and want­ed pub­lic of­fi­cers to de­cide their fate with­out their rep­re­sen­ta­tive’s ad­vice. He said the PSA had no choice but to go to court on be­half of its mem­bers at the Board of In­land Rev­enue and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

“News flash to the PM. If the Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try is dis­ap­point­ed with the lead­er­ship of PSA, no one cares. As a mat­ter of fact, if the PM was hap­py with the lead­er­ship of the PSA, then you have to run from PSA com­rades, but here in Fyz­abad, the PM must know that work­ers are dis­ap­point­ed and dis­gust­ed with his lead­er­ship of the Gov­ern­ment,” he de­clared

On the is­sue of con­tract work, Bap­tiste said he had no prob­lem with such arrange­ments but had is­sues when peo­ple were kept on con­tin­u­ous con­tracts for 15 to 17 years. He said that was the case at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and through­out the pub­lic ser­vice and those work­ers de­served per­ma­nent jobs.