DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Trade union lead­ers are de­mand­ing clar­i­ty on the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to re­quire con­vict­ed pris­on­ers sen­tenced to hard labour to par­tic­i­pate in pub­lic clean-up ex­er­cis­es, warn­ing that the ini­tia­tive rais­es ques­tions about work­ers’ rights, prison labour and the pro­tec­tion of em­ploy­ment.

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette and Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) pres­i­dent Don De­venish said more de­tails are need­ed be­fore a full as­sess­ment can be made of how the pro­gramme would op­er­ate.

While An­nisette stressed the need to pre­serve the dig­ni­ty of pris­on­ers in­volved in the pro­gramme, De­venish warned that prison labour must not be used to re­place paid work­ers.

An­nisette said any ini­tia­tive in­volv­ing pris­on­ers must be clear­ly de­fined, in­clud­ing whether the work forms part of their sen­tence and how their dig­ni­ty and rights will be pro­tect­ed.

“I am say­ing that all work­ers must have dig­ni­ty. And if you’re bring­ing them out to do some­thing like this, the dig­ni­ty of labour, is it for free? Is it as part of the sen­tence? What are we talk­ing about?”

De­venish said the pro­pos­al rais­es se­ri­ous con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing the dis­missal of thou­sands of Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) work­ers who pre­vi­ous­ly per­formed sim­i­lar pub­lic main­te­nance du­ties.

“On­ly months ago, thou­sands of CEPEP and URP work­ers were dis­missed to do this very work, and the Gov­ern­ment is now propos­ing that pris­on­ers per­form many of the very du­ties these work­ers pre­vi­ous­ly car­ried out. This rais­es a fun­da­men­tal and trou­bling ques­tion—if the work still ex­ists, why were all these thou­sands of work­ers be dis­missed? The Gov­ern­ment can­not cred­i­bly ar­gue that these jobs were un­nec­es­sary on­ly to pro­pose that the same work now be un­der­tak­en by an­oth­er group of in­di­vid­u­als, main­ly the pris­on­ers.”

He ques­tioned whether the pro­pos­al could re­sult in the State avoid­ing its oblig­a­tions as an em­ploy­er by re­plac­ing reg­u­lar em­ploy­ment with a work­force that does not have the same in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions pro­tec­tions.

“Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion must nev­er be­come a sub­sti­tute for em­ploy­ment nor should prison labour be used to re­place work­ers who have been dis­missed from their jobs.”

De­venish added, “Re­plac­ing these paid work­ers with prison labour risks cre­at­ing a dan­ger­ous prece­dent where­by the State should avoid its oblig­a­tion as an em­ploy­er by sub­sti­tut­ing reg­u­lar em­ploy­ment with a work­force that does not en­joy the same em­ploy­ment pro­tec­tions like col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights or in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions safe­guards.”

BIG­WU said it is chal­leng­ing the dis­missal of CEPEP and URP work­ers be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court, main­tain­ing they were ter­mi­nat­ed with­out valid rea­sons or due process.