Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the OW­TU An­cel Ro­get has vowed that work­ers who held out against the Gov­ern­ment’s four per cent wage of­fer will start new ne­go­ti­a­tions at 10 per cent once the UNC wins the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Speak­ing at a cam­paign meet­ing held at Vickars carpark in the Moru­ga con­stituen­cy on Thurs­day night, Ro­get slammed the PNM for what he called a be­tray­al of work­ers across the coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly in crit­i­cal state sec­tors like Petrotrin, T&TEC, the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board and the ports.

“You see the un­fair, un­just, wicked 4 per cent two by two, with no con­sol­i­da­tion of (Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance) CO­LA for that pe­ri­od, for all of the unions who stood up in de­fence of a fair wage… those unions who did not ac­cept the four per cent... ne­go­ti­a­tions will start at 10 per cent.”

Ro­get al­so re­mind­ed Petrotrin work­ers of the suf­fer­ing they en­dured un­der the PNM’s de­ci­sion to shut down the re­fin­ery.

“Don’t ever for­get, what they did to you… if it’s one group of work­ers who should vote them out re­sound­ing­ly for the atroc­i­ty that was done on them, it has to be Petrotrin work­ers," Ro­get saiud to loud ap­plause.

He con­tin­ued, “Re­mem­ber how they take away your med­ical plan while Row­ley fly out­side to Mi­a­mi to get the best med­ical care? Re­mem­ber how they put your pen­sion in jeop­ardy? And al­so re­mem­ber how some of you al­most lost your hous­es. Don’t for­get that.”

On the COVID-19 re­sponse, Ro­get said: “You re­call some­thing called manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion… Row­ley and Stu­art Young said if you did not take vac­cine, you would have no jobs. That was their re­sponse to COVID… af­ter some 5000 plus deaths, which they mis­han­dled, you had to fend for your­self.”

He said it took the in­ter­ven­tion of “so­cial move­ments, trade unions, and the help of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to push them back with the manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion they want­ed to im­pose on the coun­try.”

Ro­get al­so dis­missed claims that his union failed to sup­port com­mu­ni­ties. “Let me just say tonight for the records, with the lim­it­ed re­sources that the union has, in spite of them try­ing to kill the union… we don’t give out ham­pers. We gave out schol­ar­ships to needy peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Promis­ing change, he said, “We will do any­thing nec­es­sary to bring about good rep­re­sen­ta­tion for our mem­bers… even if we have to re­move a wicked PNM gov­ern­ment and put a UNC gov­ern­ment in place. We will do that.”

He point­ed to grow­ing sup­port for the UNC in tra­di­tion­al PNM strong­holds.

“They thought La Brea and Point Fortin were PNM safe seats… they are no longer safe seats. If there’s any­thing safe about those two seats, those two seats will be safe­ly in the hands of the UNC.”

Turn­ing to work­ers’ rights, he em­pha­sized the need for leg­isla­tive change.

“We were dis­cussing the is­sue of the work­ers agen­da, which has to do with labour leg­is­la­tion… you all brought pieces of leg­is­la­tion to the Par­lia­ment over the past 10 years but not one of those (leg­is­la­tion) rep­re­sent­ed work­ers.”

He promised re­forms for sev­er­al work­er groups.

“T&TEC work­ers… your ne­go­ti­a­tion is go­ing to start at 10 per cent. Postal work­ers – job eval­u­a­tion. NIB work­ers – im­ple­men­ta­tion of the 9 per cent. Port work­ers – 12 per cent. All of those things were agreed up­on al­ready.”

He end­ed his speech with a warn­ing to the PNM.

“Evil has a shelf life. Evil de­stroys it­self. Evil must come to an end. Trinidad and To­ba­go will be rid of the evil of the PNM on the 28th of April.”