Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (TSTT) and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) have agreed that the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue with its re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, with the re­sult that the re­trench­ment will con­tin­ue.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the com­pa­ny re­ports that the new last date of work for those be­ing re­trenched will be Fri­day 15 Ju­ly 2022.

Be­low is the full text of the state­ment from TSTT…

“Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (TSTT) and its recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) have come to an agree­ment that will see the or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­ue with its re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise with­out de­lay.

Un­der the terms of the agree­ment, TSTT will reis­sue the no­tices of re­trench­ment to the 376 unionised work­ers on May 31, 2022, with the same date (May 31, 2022) but with the last date of em­ploy­ment be­ing Ju­ly 15, 2022, in­stead of June 1, 2022, as was stat­ed in the ini­tial let­ters of sep­a­ra­tion. TSTT pre­vi­ous­ly used the June 1 date be­cause the com­pa­ny’s col­lec­tive agree­ment al­lowed for sep­a­rat­ed em­ploy­ees to leave im­me­di­ate­ly and re­ceive pay­ment in lieu of the statu­to­ry 45 days’ no­tice. The work­ers will now re­main em­ploy­ees of TSTT un­til Ju­ly 15, 2022.

The agree­ment will not re­duce em­ploy­ees’ sev­er­ance pack­ages in any way.

Af­ter four months of con­sul­ta­tions with its em­ploy­ees’ unions, on May 31, TSTT is­sued no­tices of re­trench­ment to 403 of its unionised em­ploy­ees ad­vis­ing them that their ser­vices were sur­plus to the needs of the re­struc­tured or­gan­i­sa­tion. Re­trench­ment no­tices were al­so is­sued to 65 of TSTT’s man­age­ment staff.

On the same day, the CWU filed an ap­pli­ca­tion for an ex parte in­junc­tion, claim­ing TSTT had breached good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice by not giv­ing the work­ers 45 days’ no­tice. The In­dus­tri­al Court did not grant the CWU’s ex parte in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion but stayed any ac­tion by the Com­pa­ny pend­ing a fur­ther hear­ing. Un­der the terms of the stay, all work­ers who re­ceived no­tices of re­trench­ment, but who wished nev­er­the­less to do so, were al­lowed to re­port for work.

Some 44 of the 376 af­fect­ed work­ers put them­selves on a list of per­sons want­i­ng to re­port for work; but few­er than 20 turned out on any one day."