Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is hope­ful that work­ers at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) will be­gin re­ceiv­ing out­stand­ing cost-of-liv­ing al­lowance (CO­LA) pay­ments be­fore Christ­mas. How­ev­er, the union says sev­er­al years of wage ne­go­ti­a­tions re­main un­re­solved.

OW­TU First Vice-Pres­i­dent Sati Ga­jad­har-In­niss said yes­ter­day that dis­cus­sions with T&TEC man­age­ment were con­tin­u­ing and that the com­pa­ny had com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing the out­stand­ing pay­ments fol­low­ing re­cent ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Her com­ments came af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath an­nounced dur­ing Mon­day’s 2027 Bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment that about $15 mil­lion in out­stand­ing CO­LA pay­ments on over­time earn­ings would be paid in two in­stal­ments.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the union had re­ceived as­sur­ances that the mat­ter would be ad­dressed be­fore the end of the year.

“We have been hav­ing dis­cus­sions. The last time we met at the ne­go­ti­a­tion ta­ble, the com­pa­ny com­mit­ted to look­ing at the re­main­der of the CO­LA back­pay,” she said.

Asked whether work­ers could ex­pect pay­ment be­fore De­cem­ber 31, she replied: “Well, they have in­di­cat­ed that it should be paid be­fore the end of the year, yes.”

Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the out­stand­ing CO­LA pay­ments were on­ly one part of the union’s on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with the elec­tric­i­ty provider. The union has al­so sub­mit­ted its po­si­tion on out­stand­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing mat­ters and is await­ing a re­sponse from man­age­ment.

“We have been in dis­cus­sions with them be­cause we al­so asked them to look at [the ne­go­ti­a­tions], and we did meet and give them a po­si­tion, which we asked them to look at and come back to the ta­ble as soon as pos­si­ble,” she said.

Sev­er­al bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods re­main un­re­solved, Ga­jad­har-In­niss said, adding that ne­go­ti­a­tions had not yet caught up with 2026.

The union has been seek­ing to re­solve long­stand­ing wage dis­putes, in­clud­ing mat­ters from ear­li­er bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods that were re­ferred to the In­dus­tri­al Court.

The lat­est as­sur­ance fol­lows the Gov­ern­ment’s 2027 Bud­get, pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo on Oc­to­ber 12.

Dur­ing Mon­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate, Padarath said T&TEC work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the OW­TU would re­ceive out­stand­ing CO­LA on over­time earn­ings ac­cu­mu­lat­ed be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2015, and Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025.

He put the out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ty at about $15 mil­lion and said the first in­stal­ment would be paid on De­cem­ber 15, 2026, fol­lowed by the sec­ond on Jan­u­ary 15, 2027.

The sched­ule means work­ers are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive part of the out­stand­ing amount be­fore Christ­mas, with the full pay­ment ex­tend­ing in­to the new year.

Padarath said the arrange­ment fol­lowed dis­cus­sions with the union on Sep­tem­ber 8 and formed part of the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to ad­dress long­stand­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions dis­putes in the pub­lic util­i­ties sec­tor.

The com­mit­ment fol­lows a sep­a­rate $131 mil­lion CO­LA set­tle­ment an­nounced in No­vem­ber 2025, which af­fect­ed about 3,000 T&TEC em­ploy­ees.

Un­der that agree­ment be­tween T&TEC and the OW­TU, retroac­tive pay­ments were to be made in four in­stal­ments be­tween No­vem­ber 2025 and Feb­ru­ary 2026. Padarath said at the time that the set­tle­ment ad­dressed CO­LA ad­just­ments that had been out­stand­ing for al­most a decade. The first pay­ment was made on No­vem­ber 18, 2025.

The lat­est $15 mil­lion com­mit­ment re­lates specif­i­cal­ly to out­stand­ing CO­LA on over­time earn­ings for ac­tive em­ploy­ees and is sep­a­rate from the ear­li­er set­tle­ment.

The wage ne­go­ti­a­tions al­so have a lengthy le­gal his­to­ry. In Feb­ru­ary 2022, the In­dus­tri­al Court award­ed T&TEC work­ers no salary in­creas­es for the 2015–2017 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od, cit­ing the com­mis­sion’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and its in­abil­i­ty to af­ford ad­di­tion­al labour costs.

The OW­TU chal­lenged the rul­ing. In Feb­ru­ary 2025, the Court of Ap­peal set aside the In­dus­tri­al Court’s de­ci­sion, find­ing that the court had re­lied on ma­te­r­i­al about T&TEC’s fi­nances with­out giv­ing the par­ties an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress it.

The Court of Ap­peal or­dered the dis­put­ed wage and al­lowance pro­vi­sions to be re­con­sid­ered by a new­ly con­sti­tut­ed In­dus­tri­al Court pan­el. The rul­ing did not grant work­ers a salary in­crease but re­opened con­sid­er­a­tion of the dis­put­ed pro­vi­sions.

Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the out­stand­ing CO­LA pay­ments and un­re­solved wage ne­go­ti­a­tions re­mained sep­a­rate mat­ters re­quir­ing con­tin­ued en­gage­ment with man­age­ment.

The pay­ment com­mit­ment of­fers some re­lief to em­ploy­ees await­ing out­stand­ing amounts, but the union con­tin­ues to press for ne­go­ti­a­tions to move be­yond the his­tor­i­cal bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods. With no set­tle­ment yet cov­er­ing the cur­rent year, at­ten­tion now turns to whether T&TEC will meet the De­cem­ber pay­ment com­mit­ment and re­turn to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble to ad­dress the out­stand­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments.