The Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) has re­ject­ed claims that an agree­ment was reached to pay Port-of-Spain port work­ers’ out­stand­ing back­pay over five years.

In a me­dia re­lease, the union said no dis­cus­sions had tak­en place, and no agree­ment had been reached with the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) or the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for the port to set­tle the out­stand­ing pay­ments in five an­nu­al in­stal­ments.

The union’s state­ment fol­lows claims made dur­ing re­cent par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings sug­gest­ing that such an arrange­ment was in place.

SWW­TU said it want­ed to cor­rect the in­for­ma­tion and en­sure work­ers were not mis­led about the sta­tus of their out­stand­ing en­ti­tle­ments.

It stressed that its re­jec­tion of a five-year pay­ment arrange­ment should not be in­ter­pret­ed as op­po­si­tion to re­ceiv­ing back­pay or as a re­jec­tion of work­ers’ right to the mon­ey owed to them.

The union said the set­tle­ment of out­stand­ing back­pay and monies owed for act­ing ap­point­ments re­mained un­re­solved.

It added that any cal­cu­la­tions of the sums due to work­ers must ac­count for all out­stand­ing ar­rears, in­clud­ing pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions, over­time pay­ments and act­ing al­lowances.

“Port work­ers are en­ti­tled to ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion and the full set­tle­ment of their out­stand­ing en­ti­tle­ments,” the union said.

It called for an im­me­di­ate clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the state­ments made dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings and mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment among the rel­e­vant par­ties to re­solve the long­stand­ing is­sues.

The union main­tained that work­ers must re­ceive all out­stand­ing monies owed to them and that no agree­ment should be at­trib­uted to the or­gan­i­sa­tion when none had been reached.