DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Trade union lead­ers are crit­i­cis­ing what they de­scribe as the si­lence of some labour or­gan­i­sa­tions fol­low­ing re­ports of near­ly 6,000 job loss­es in the first quar­ter of 2026. They are al­so call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide as­sur­ances to work­ers amid un­cer­tain­ty over the fu­ture of Hilton Trinidad.

The lat­est Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) Labour Force Sur­vey showed em­ploy­ment de­clined by 5,900 be­tween the fourth quar­ter of 2025 and the first quar­ter of 2026.

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette and Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) pres­i­dent Don De­venish said trade unions have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­de­pen­dent­ly as­sess gov­ern­ment poli­cies and speak out on is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers.

De­venish ar­gued that the re­port­ed job loss­es showed gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives were fail­ing and sug­gest­ed un­em­ploy­ment was high­er than the CSO fig­ures in­di­cat­ed, not­ing that many for­mer CEPEP and URP work­ers re­mained with­out jobs.

He de­scribed the lat­est fig­ures as “a wake-up call” for the Gov­ern­ment and said it should en­gage trade unions and the wider pub­lic to de­vel­op a com­pre­hen­sive em­ploy­ment strat­e­gy.

De­venish al­so crit­i­cised the si­lence of trade unions aligned with the Gov­ern­ment’s Coali­tion of In­ter­ests.

“We have no prob­lems with the PSA (Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion), the OW­TU (Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union), or any union hav­ing a re­la­tion­ship with any gov­ern­ment. But when it comes to work­ers and is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers, they should take a labour stance and not re­main silent,” he said.

An­nisette said while NATUC could not speak on be­half of oth­er labour or­gan­i­sa­tions, it would con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for work­ers’ rights.

“We can­not call to be a stake­hold­er. We can­not say that we want tri­par­tite dis­cus­sions if things af­fect so­ci­ety and we re­main silent. We would not re­main silent,” he said.

He added that the lat­est labour force fig­ures point to broad­er eco­nom­ic chal­lenges re­quir­ing ur­gent at­ten­tion and said labour or­gan­i­sa­tions must con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments af­fect­ing work­ers.

The em­ploy­ment con­cerns come as Hilton Trinidad faces an un­cer­tain fu­ture. The ho­tel could cease op­er­a­tions on Sep­tem­ber 18 if ne­go­ti­a­tions on a new lease agree­ment with the state-owned Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (eTeck) are not con­clud­ed. Up to 300 work­ers could be af­fect­ed.

Com­ment­ing on the pos­si­ble de­par­ture of Hilton Trinidad, An­nisette said the is­sue should nev­er have been al­lowed to be­come a pub­lic dis­pute.

“Why must we reach a stage where the Hilton brand, an in­ter­na­tion­al brand, is threat­en­ing to leave the coun­try if it does not have a re­new­al of the lease by Sep­tem­ber? Weren’t we aware that the lease was com­ing to an end? Don’t we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that we ne­go­ti­ate the lease with­in an ap­pro­pri­ate time so that we wouldn’t have all these dis­cus­sions and all these psy­cho­log­i­cal fears play­ing on the minds of the or­di­nary work­ers at Hilton?” he asked.

“We have what I want to call an im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have to get re­al­ly se­ri­ous and be­come first world. This should not be al­lowed to hap­pen, where we hear this kind of bat­tle, or ver­bal bat­tle, play­ing out in the pub­lic do­main, af­fect­ing work­ers and their fam­i­lies. We in NATUC have a se­ri­ous con­cern about that.”

Mean­while, De­venish said the Gov­ern­ment, as a par­ty to the ne­go­ti­a­tions, should pro­vide im­me­di­ate as­sur­ances to work­ers while dis­cus­sions con­tin­ue.

“We be­lieve that the Gov­ern­ment should pub­licly and un­equiv­o­cal­ly as­sure the work­ers, the CWU and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that the em­ploy­ment of the Hilton Trinidad and To­ba­go work­force will be pro­tect­ed while dis­cus­sions con­tin­ue to­wards the con­clu­sion of a new lease arrange­ment.

“Such an as­sur­ance would not com­pro­mise the com­mer­cial ne­go­ti­a­tions. Rather, it would demon­strate re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship, pro­mote in­dus­tri­al sta­bil­i­ty and re­in­force the Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing work­ers and pre­serv­ing de­cent em­ploy­ment.”

He agreed that the pro­longed un­cer­tain­ty was cre­at­ing un­nec­es­sary anx­i­ety for work­ers and their fam­i­lies and said greater trans­paren­cy through­out the ne­go­ti­a­tions was es­sen­tial.