An­na-Lisa Paul

In an at­tempt to for­mu­late a frame­work to guide safe work as T&T moves to­wards a full re­open­ing of the econ­o­my, the heads of sev­er­al busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions have start­ed dis­cus­sions with the trade union move­ment, hop­ing to ar­rive at a po­si­tion that will pro­tect work­ers’ rights and pre­serve the rights of all em­ploy­ers.

In a joint re­lease yes­ter­day, the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGO’s (FI­TUN) said Tues­day’s meet­ing was “to com­mence bi-lat­er­al di­a­logue on the frame­work for safe work in a COVID-19 en­vi­ron­ment across all sec­tors as the econ­o­my re­opens, with the aim of mit­i­gat­ing fur­ther eco­nom­ic hard­ship.”

The Au­gust 3 meet­ing was held at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-Op­er­a­tive Stud­ies (CCLCS) in Val­sayn and was chaired by CCLCS di­rec­tor Dr An­dre Vin­cent Hen­ry.

Al­though no date was giv­en in the re­lease for a sec­ond meet­ing, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands an­oth­er ses­sion is be­ing pro­posed for to­mor­row.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both sides yes­ter­day re­fused to di­vulge de­tails of what has so far been ven­ti­lat­ed, but de­scribed the meet­ing as cour­te­ous.

One per­son in­di­cat­ed, “With the Delta vari­ant pos­ing more of a threat to us due to how con­ta­gious it is, T&T with its low vac­ci­na­tion rate is in a very pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion.”

A sec­ond per­son ad­mit­ted the meet­ing was in­stru­men­tal in bring­ing rel­e­vant par­ties to­geth­er to be­gin dis­cus­sions.

“Both par­ties are com­mit­ted to the process in try­ing to find a way to bal­ance le­git­i­mate con­cerns and needs in this new COVID-19 en­vi­ron­ment.”

These con­cerns, he claimed, in­clud­ed “pro­tec­tion of pri­va­cy, pro­tec­tion of work­ers’ rights, pro­tec­tion of em­ploy­ment, pro­tec­tion of liveli­hoods and pro­tec­tion of lives.”

The long-term aim of the dis­cus­sions will be to achieve a “struc­tured and hu­mane frame­work” mov­ing for­ward.

A work­ing doc­u­ment is cur­rent­ly be­ing com­piled and will be cir­cu­lat­ed amongst mem­bers to in­vite sug­ges­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions be­fore any de­fin­i­tive pol­i­cy is pub­lished.

FITUN President Joseph Remy

FI­TUN was rep­re­sent­ed by pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my while JTUM’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives in­clud­ed gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ozzi War­wick and as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary Trevor John­son, along with ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers Leti­tia Cox and Nir­van Ma­haraj.

NATUC was rep­re­sent­ed by gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette and first vice-pres­i­dent James Lam­bert, along with ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Judy Charles.

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in­clud­ed AM­CHAM T&T CEO Ni­rad Tewarie, En­er­gy Cham­ber pres­i­dent and CEO Dax Dri­ver, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Charles Pash­ley, CEO Gabriel Faria and COO Michelle Gon­salves-Suite and T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al and CEO Ramesh Ramdeen.

While the Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) was not in­vit­ed to the meet­ing, its chair­man Ke­ston Nan­coo re­in­forced, “Work­place poli­cies are sup­posed to be dri­ven and in­formed by labour leg­is­la­tion in the coun­try.”

He ac­knowl­edged T&T was at a place where eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery is very much de­pen­dent on a vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion and said of­fi­cials could not com­plete­ly ig­nore ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion.

“This is why the ECA has been talk­ing about moral sua­sion and I have no doubt that in the not too dis­tant fu­ture, you will see a step­ping up of the pace in terms of where we need to land,” he said.

Nan­coo ex­plained, “You can­not ask an em­ploy­er to meet his/her oblig­a­tions un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty reg­u­la­tion and the em­ploy­ee, who al­so has an oblig­a­tion and more specif­i­cal­ly, the em­ploy­ee can with­hold his/her labour if the work­place en­vi­ron­ment is not con­ducive for health or is threat­en­ing to life, limb or health. So I rather sus­pect that is where it will end up and I hope rea­son will pre­vail.”