Chester Sam­bra­no

Pub­lic sec­tor work­ers are plan­ning to show strength and sol­i­dar­i­ty to­day by unan­i­mous­ly re­ject­ing the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s (CPO’s) two per cent wage in­crease of­fer for the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od 2014 to 2021.

The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) has is­sued a call to all work­ers and oth­ers to join in to­day’s protest march, which starts at 9 am at Memo­r­i­al Park in Port-of-Spain.

The march is ex­pect­ed to end at the Min­istry of Fi­nance Tow­ers on In­de­pen­dence Square.

“NATUC, there­fore, calls on all gov­ern­ment month­ly and dai­ly-rat­ed em­ploy­ees, pen­sion­ers, the youths, sin­gle par­ents, cit­i­zens and oth­er in­ter­est­ed groups to come out in your num­bers and de­mand your fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights for liv­ing wages and de­cent terms and con­di­tion of em­ploy­ment and a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go for all,” NATUC said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

NATUC again high­light­ed its dis­plea­sure with what has been placed on the ta­ble by CPO Dr Daryl Din­di­al.

“NATUC views the Row­ley-led Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­al as an act of eco­nom­ic vi­o­lence and an abuse against all gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees and there­fore un­re­served­ly states that the 2% of­fer is in­sen­si­tive, mis­di­rect­ed, re­gret­tably con­fronta­tion­al and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.”

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) has al­ready called on its mem­bers to at­tend the march.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), led by the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent-gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, will be march­ing in sup­port as well.

Yes­ter­day, two arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the T&T Pris­ons and Fire Ser­vices, al­so of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­tered their re­jec­tion of the CPO’s of­fer.

CPO Dr Daryl Dindial, left, receives a letter from Fire Services Association president Leo Ramkissoon while Prison Officers’ Association president Ceron Richards looks on at the CPO’s office on Alexander Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

Flanked by mem­bers dressed in green and red, both as­so­ci­a­tions de­liv­ered let­ters to the CPO’s of­fice on Alexan­dra Street, St Clair, around 9.30 am.

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Cer­ron Richards ques­tioned if the Gov­ern­ment cared about the lives and liveli­hoods of of­fi­cers.

“That counter-pro­pos­al is just dis­re­spect ar­tic­u­lat­ed in writ­ing,” he said.

His sen­ti­ments were echoed by Fire Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon.

“What has been per­pe­trat­ed on us is not an of­fer, it is an as­sault and mem­bers view it as such.”

He ex­plained that this was why they took the first step to go out and in­di­cate their re­jec­tion to the CPO.

Ramkissoon al­so said with the in­creased rev­enue now be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in this coun­try, the Gov­ern­ment has to ex­plain its two per cent of­fer. He said based on their cal­cu­la­tions, there has been a mar­ket shift of over 14 per cent for the 2014 to 2016 pe­ri­od alone. He said both as­so­ci­a­tions have sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als for that three-year pe­ri­od on­ly and will not be go­ing any fur­ther un­til those years are set­tled first.

“Come with 10 per cent to start and we can start to work our way for a rea­son­able fig­ure be­tween that and the 14 per cent that is sup­posed to be ap­plic­a­ble for the 2014 to 2016 pe­ri­od and then we can talk about 2017 go­ing for­ward.”

On Wednes­day, the CPO re­mind­ed the na­tion that pub­lic sec­tor ne­go­ti­a­tions re­main an on­go­ing process.

The CPO’s of­fer al­so in­cludes Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowances of $240 per month ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2020 and $255 per month ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2021, and ad­just­ments on some al­lowances with ef­fect from De­cem­ber 1st, 2021, such as Up­keep Al­lowance mov­ing from $2,400 to $2,550 and Kilo­met­ric Al­lowance mov­ing from $2.35 to $2.45, which the PSA has de­scribed as mea­gre.

On Tues­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said this coun­try is spend­ing $19 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly to pay salaries in the state sec­tor.

He said, “Out of To­tal Rev­enue of $47B (the lat­est 2022 es­ti­mate, based on im­proved oil and gas prices). This is 40% of To­tal Rev­enue.”

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