Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) has threat­ened to take the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to the In­dus­tri­al Court over what it de­scribes as a “clear and di­rect vi­o­la­tion” of the reg­is­tered col­lec­tive agree­ment gov­ern­ing pro­mo­tions and act­ing ap­point­ments.

In a let­ter dat­ed Au­gust 6 and ad­dressed to act­ing CEO Jee­van Joseph, PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas ob­ject­ed to a re­cent in­ter­nal di­rec­tive re­quir­ing all pro­posed pro­mo­tions and staffing arrange­ments to first be ap­proved by the CEO’s of­fice be­fore be­ing sub­mit­ted to the Hu­man Re­sources Di­vi­sion.

Thomas warned that un­less the di­rec­tive is with­drawn im­me­di­ate­ly, the union will treat it as an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence.

“The in­struc­tion is not on­ly pro­ce­du­ral­ly im­prop­er but rep­re­sents a clear and di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the reg­is­tered col­lec­tive agree­ment be­tween the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and the As­so­ci­a­tion,” Thomas wrote.

Cit­ing the agree­ment, Thomas said the process for tem­po­rary ap­point­ments is clear­ly de­fined: “All act­ing ap­point­ments of less than six months du­ra­tion shall be made on the ba­sis of a rec­om­men­da­tion from the Di­vi­sion­al Head ex­cept where the Di­vi­sion­al Head con­sid­ers that a more suit­able can­di­date might be found in an­oth­er Di­vi­sion; in such cas­es the post shall be filled by rec­om­men­da­tion from the Man­ag­er, Hu­man Re­sources Ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

She ar­gued that the CEO’s di­rec­tive “pur­ports to in­sert an unau­tho­rised lev­el of ex­ec­u­tive in­ter­fer­ence” in­to an agreed process that was “metic­u­lous­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed and reg­is­tered” un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act.

“The in­ser­tion of your of­fice as an ap­proval point usurps the au­thor­i­ty of the di­vi­sion­al heads and the Man­ag­er of Hu­man Re­sources Ad­min­is­tra­tion, as spec­i­fied in the agree­ment, and con­sti­tutes a breach of the terms there­in,” she wrote, call­ing the move “uni­lat­er­al, im­prop­er, and ac­tion­able.”

The PSA has giv­en WASA un­til Mon­day to with­draw the di­rec­tive and is­sue a re­vised com­mu­ni­ca­tion to man­agers reaf­firm­ing the agreed process for act­ing ap­point­ments.

Thomas told Guardian Me­dia that Joseph has since promised the in­struc­tion would be re­scind­ed, de­scrib­ing it as an over­sight.

In a state­ment, WASA ac­knowl­edged the con­cerns raised and said the act­ing CEO has re­quest­ed a meet­ing with the PSA pres­i­dent to re­solve the mat­ter and en­sure full com­pli­ance with the col­lec­tive agree­ment.

“The Au­thor­i­ty re­mains ful­ly com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices and val­ues the part­ner­ship with our work­ers and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives,” WASA said, adding that its poli­cies will con­tin­ue to be guid­ed by fair­ness, trans­paren­cy, and ad­her­ence to es­tab­lished agree­ments.