Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

“Row­ley must go! Row­ley must go!” thun­dered through the mas­sive au­di­to­ri­um at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence on April 5, 2025.

With ap­prox­i­mate­ly three weeks to go be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tions, the at­mos­phere at the venue as the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) fore­shad­owed what was to be an over­whelm­ing vic­to­ry by the par­ty and like­wise a re­sound­ing lick­ing for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

Be­cause the chant against the then for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, but still po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, came not on­ly from those wreathed in yel­low, but from a mass of green from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), with the words The Big Green Army em­bla­zoned on their t-shirts.

A smat­ter­ing of bur­gundy was vis­i­ble as the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) was al­so in at­ten­dance, and of course, the union blue of the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) al­so joined in the cho­rus that had switched to a sim­ple yet clar­i­on, “UNC! UNC! UNC!”

Echo­ing the events of 2010, the UNC again bro­kered an al­liance with the labour move­ment, rid­ing a wave of work­ing-class sup­port back in­to of­fice.

But has that part­ner­ship led to a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for work­ers?

Along with the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), SWW­TU, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) and the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­al Work­ers (NUGFW), the UNC gen­er­at­ed a 20-point com­mit­ment plan to im­prove con­di­tions for the work­ers. That doc­u­ment is called the Work­ers’ Agen­da.

Com­mit­ment num­ber one was to re­ject what it called the “un­just four per cent and five per cent im­posed on all state sec­tor work­ers.”

To that end, in its first year in of­fice, the Gov­ern­ment, through the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO), com­plet­ed two suc­cess­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions for al­most 40,000 pub­lic sec­tor work­ers through grant­i­ng ten per cent in­creas­es to both the PSA and NUGFW for the out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­at­ing cov­er­ing 2014-2019.

Ar­rears for the PSA amount­ed to $3.8 bil­lion, and the NUGFW’s back­pay amount­ed to $2.6 bil­lion.

How­ev­er, in the PSA’s case. It was not done with­out con­tro­ver­sy. Af­ter a com­bat­ive back and forth be­tween the PSA’s Fe­li­cia Thomas and CPO Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al, the PSA set­tled on salaries and al­lowances; how­ev­er, aside from a part-pay­ment of back­pay for Christ­mas, the union was told that the rest would have to be paid in “non-cash” op­tions. Some­thing Thomas firm­ly re­ject­ed, and ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue on that mat­ter.

Guardian Me­dia has had tremen­dous dif­fi­cul­ty speak­ing with Thomas since ear­ly De­cem­ber. Some cat­e­gories of health care work­ers who are PSA mem­bers did not ben­e­fit from the ten per cent agree­ment, and many are still await­ing word from the union.

Mean­while, on March 31, the NUGFW set­tled both salaries and ar­rears (al­so non-cash) with­out fuss.

Both unions have hailed the Gov­ern­ment for keep­ing its word.

Cur­rent­ly, the CPO is en­gaged with the as­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, the fire ser­vice and prison of­fi­cers.

Labour re­la­tions spe­cial­ist, Trevor John­son, who has more than 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the lo­cal, re­gion­al and glob­al labour move­ment, has giv­en the Gov­ern­ment cred­it for ef­fect­ing and ini­ti­at­ing some of the key promis­es out­lined in the Work­ers’ Agen­da.

John­son said, “The Gov­ern­ment al­so promised to amend leg­is­la­tion to re­peal the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA). This was done very ear­ly in its term, and the key ben­e­fi­cia­ry of this was the PSA, which rep­re­sents the work­ers who would have been tak­en up by the TTRA.”

Asked if work­ers are not bet­ter off than they were one year ago, John­son said this is a “sub­ject of mixed re­view.”

“Work­ers who were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of col­lec­tive agree­ment set­tle­ments and back­pay would like­ly feel bet­ter off.”

How­ev­er, he said that would not be the case for oth­ers.

“In the Health Care sec­tor, the Gov­ern­ment, one hopes, is mov­ing to ad­dress is­sues fac­ing nurs­es and their union (TTR­NA). They are still on 2013 salaries even though they were clas­si­fied as es­sen­tial work­ers dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

“Work­ers who have lost their jobs, like CEPEP, URP, and Re-foresta­tion, will cer­tain­ly not feel bet­ter off un­less they got a new and bet­ter job op­por­tu­ni­ty since.”

John­son al­so not­ed that, “The Gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted to re­open the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery while on the cam­paign trail. This is ad­mit­ted­ly a com­plex mat­ter, but the Gov­ern­ment have tak­en vis­i­ble steps to ad­vance this process, much of which has been re­port­ed in the me­dia.”

The OW­TU, through its com­pa­ny Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies, is cur­rent­ly push­ing for Gov­ern­ment ap­proval of a US$50 mil­lion tech­ni­cal in­spec­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion study of the re­fin­ery, fund­ed by their part­ner, the Ital­ian en­gi­neer­ing firm Tec­n­i­mont.

For the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU), the Gov­ern­ment’s first year has been char­ac­terised as one that promised much, de­liv­ered se­lec­tive­ly and un­set­tled more than it sta­bilised.

Start­ing with the good, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer wrote, “The de­ci­sion to re­move tax­a­tion on pri­vate pen­sions is a com­mend­able and long over­due mea­sure. Equal­ly, the pro­posed amend­ments to the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act sig­nal a mean­ing­ful at­tempt to cor­rect struc­tur­al in­jus­tices that have plagued work­ers for decades.” These were in­clud­ed in the Work­ers’ Agen­da.

How­ev­er, as it per­tains to what the union called, “The Ug­ly,” Ogeer said the coun­try can­not turn a blind eye to the “lived re­al­i­ty.”

Mean­while, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is giv­ing the gov­ern­ment a C grade for its first year.

De­spite rat­i­fy­ing its five per cent wage in­crease agree­ment that was signed un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion weeks be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion, teach­ers still do not have a def­i­nite date on when they will get their back­pay.

Re­flect­ing on the last 12 months, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe told Guardian Me­dia it seems as if the unions that cam­paigned with the UNC re­ceived pref­er­en­tial treat­ment.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it would seem so. Be­cause there are facts and ev­i­dence to show that TTUTA would have ne­go­ti­at­ed in April of 2025, agreed, signed and every­thing. And we were wait­ing to have our mon­ey dis­bursed.

“It didn’t hap­pen. And then you had an­oth­er union com­ing, as I would or we would nor­mal­ly say out of the blue, and get­ting their doc­u­ments signed. We do not as­so­ciate or af­fil­i­ate with any po­lit­i­cal par­ty. And if that rubs them the wrong way, so be it. I’m not go­ing to apol­o­gise for that.”

Ashe said in year two, he would ap­pre­ci­ate a more gen­uine at­tempt by the gov­ern­ment to com­mu­ni­cate di­rect­ly with unions.

Labour Min­is­ter

calls for pa­tience

Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste said the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing out of its way to keep its word to work­ers, but it must be done in the con­text of fund­ing and af­ford­abil­i­ty.

Bap­tiste said he’s proud that the Gov­ern­ment, in just its first year, was able to “tick off” sev­er­al com­mit­ments iden­ti­fied in the Work­ers’ agen­da.

“I know that cost of liv­ing is an is­sue that very few per­sons seem to un­der­stand, but what the last regime was in­tend­ed to do was to ef­fec­tive­ly cut the work­ers’ salary by re­fus­ing to con­sol­i­date cost of liv­ing. And work­ers were able to dodge that bul­let with this UNC gov­ern­ment, be­cause this gov­ern­ment con­sol­i­dat­ed the cost of liv­ing on­to their pay. So their salary went up by the con­sol­i­da­tion of the cost of liv­ing.”

He main­tains that work­ers are now in a bet­ter place com­pared to April 2025.

How­ev­er, he said things are be­ing done “slow­ly but sure­ly” due to lim­it­ed funds.

“Some­times you would hear the Gov­ern­ment speak about com­ing in with an emp­ty trea­sury. That is slow­ing up our abil­i­ty. Now, this Gov­ern­ment has not tak­en the easy route of putting its hands up in the air and say­ing, ‘Hey, we make promis­es, we can’t keep them. Yes, it ap­pears to be slow­ing us up, but we are press­ing on.’”

As it per­tains to claims of pri­or­i­ty be­ing giv­en to pro-UNC unions, Bap­tiste said, “I don’t know about pref­er­en­tial treat­ment. I know that the Gov­ern­ment made cer­tain com­mit­ments to pub­lic of­fi­cers and the Gov­ern­ment is keep­ing its word, but the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing con­tin­ues with re­spect to all per­sons who are en­ti­tled to meet around the ta­ble and en­gage in col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing.”

Bap­tiste said while the CPO and Min­istry of Fi­nance sit at the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble, he is spear­head­ing an ef­fort to en­hance pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“The truth is, we have no choice right now. It’s not about oil and gas. It’s about how we cre­ate a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage to en­hance pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in this coun­try.”

STA­TUS OF COM­MIT­MENTS MADE IN THE WORK­ERS’ AGEN­DA

Re­jec­tion of 4% wage in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants Com­plet­ed

Cre­at­ing a liv­ing wage In progress

Re­peal­ing TTRA leg­is­la­tion Com­plet­ed

Op­po­si­tion of con­tract work­ers No up­date

Re­view In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act In progress

Le­git­imis­ing trade unions In progress

Con­trib­u­to­ry pen­sion plan for dai­ly rat­ed work­ers ↓In progress since the last ad­min­is­tra­tion

Reestab­lish­ing the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee In progress

Pri­or­i­ty ac­cess to HDC hous­ing In progress

Free col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process Com­plet­ed

Preser­va­tion of CO­LA Com­plet­ed

Im­proved health plan In progress

Strength­en­ing Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny In progress

Re­duce food im­port bill In progress

Land tenure for farm­ers Not done

Mod­ernise labour leg­is­la­tion In progress

Strength­en agri­cul­tur­al agen­cies In progress

Pro­tec­tions for do­mes­tic work­ers In progress

Elim­i­nate tax­es on pri­vate pen­sions Com­plet­ed

Re­open the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery In progress