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.