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Monday, March 17, 2025

Union leaders call for Industrial Court judge to step down

by

Carisa Lee
180 days ago
20240918
 President of JTUM Ancel Roget, centre,  addresses members of the media at the union's press conference on the Brain Lara Promenade, Port-of-Spain on Tuesday.

President of JTUM Ancel Roget, centre, addresses members of the media at the union's press conference on the Brain Lara Promenade, Port-of-Spain on Tuesday.

KERWIN PIERRE

Mem­bers of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) opt­ed out of the spe­cial sit­ting of the In­dus­tri­al Court for the open­ing of the new law term 2024 to 2025 on Tues­day morn­ing. In­stead, they joined the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) Idi Stu­art and the pres­i­dent of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) Deryck Richard­son in their call for the court's In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Chair­man Lawrence Achong to step down.

Ear­li­er this year, Richard­son, Stu­art, and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teacher’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) made the call for him to go. On Tues­day while on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, they got sup­port from their com­rades.

“This morn­ing (Tues­day) in par­tic­u­lar the JTUM which in­cludes the EPA and its ex­ec­u­tives, call for the re­moval of the chair­man of the spe­cial tri­bunal of the In­dus­tri­al Court Mr Lar­ry Achong,” JTUM Pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get said.

Ro­get made it clear their stance had noth­ing to do with the In­dus­tri­al Court.

“We hold no po­si­tion against the court it­self or the var­i­ous judges that com­prise the court,” Ro­get added.

The EPA pres­i­dent ex­plained that the protest was nec­es­sary and cit­ed the 2014 re­trench­ment of Roy­al Bank of­fi­cers. He said the mat­ter went to the Spe­cial Tri­bunal which ruled that the as­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) did not have any lo­cus stan­di (ca­pac­i­ty to bring an ac­tion to the court) and the mat­ter was stood down.

Richard­son said they took the mat­ter to the High Court which agreed with the Spe­cial Tri­bunal, so in 2019, they took it to the Ap­peal Court which agreed with the as­so­ci­a­tion and struck down the de­ci­sion of the Spe­cial Tri­bunal and the High Court.

He added that in a “shock­ing move,” the Spe­cial Tri­bunal sought leave to ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil.

“So what we had a sit­u­a­tion there now that the place that we go for jus­tice was ac­tu­al­ly ap­peal­ing a judg­ment in which they had no in­ter­est and we made that pub­lic,” he said.

Richard­son said the Privy Coun­cil, how­ev­er, ques­tioned the con­duct of the Spe­cial Tri­bunal.

This was writ­ten in the let­ter JTUM sent to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sep­tem­ber 12.

In it, the union said the Privy Coun­cil ob­served that the tri­bunal ne­glect­ed the prin­ci­ples of im­par­tial­i­ty and neu­tral­i­ty. The let­ter said the tri­bunal was fur­ther crit­i­cised for ab­di­cat­ing its statu­to­ry du­ties and act­ing as if it had an in­ter­est in the out­come on be­half of a third par­ty.

Richard­son said the Privy Coun­cil re­ferred the mat­ter back to the Spe­cial Tri­bunal to be heard but no one who was par­ty to the mat­ter could sit in the hear­ings.

"Un­less Mr Lar­ry Achong stands down or be re­moved from the po­si­tion, we will have to wait un­til an­oth­er chair­man of the Spe­cial Tri­bunal is ap­point­ed and that we find to be rep­re­hen­si­ble and is an oblig­a­tion of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of those in au­thor­i­ty to en­sure jus­tice is dis­pensed and dis­pensed quick­ly,” he said.

Richard­son said Achong was the on­ly per­son who sat on the pan­el and now as In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Chair­man he has to be present for there to be a quo­rum.

“In the law, there is no pro­vi­sion for any­body to sit in for the chair­man of the Spe­cial Tri­bunal,” he said.

JTUM called on the Prime Min­is­ter to take the ap­pro­pri­ate steps to rec­ti­fy this mat­ter.

Mean­while, the JTUM leader said he has not for­got­ten how for­mer In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix was "re­moved from of­fice."

On De­cem­ber 12, 2023, JTUM, the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOs (FI­TUN), and the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) de­liv­ered a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo ex­press­ing their con­cern af­ter a new court pres­i­dent was named.

The union leader claimed Thomas-Fe­lix was giv­en the news via tele­phone while on an as­sign­ment in Gene­va.

“There could be noth­ing more dis­re­spect­ful than that ap­proach...the Pres­i­dent did not even have the lev­el of de­cen­cy of re­spect to ac­knowl­edge, let alone re­spond to the coun­try's three trade union bod­ies rep­re­sent­ing work­ers in this coun­try,” Ro­get said.


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