Carisa Lee

Trade Unions from across the coun­try yes­ter­day re­quest­ed a meet­ing with the gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss the way for­ward for the work­ing class.

The call was made at a vir­tu­al ral­ly dur­ing which mem­bers of Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOs (FI­TUN) and Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) con­gre­gat­ed to dis­cuss is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers such as wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, pri­vati­sa­tion, util­i­ties and pub­lic ser­vices.

“We are talk­ing about sit­ting down, hav­ing a con­vo and work out a mech­a­nism, any­thing less than that is dis­re­spect,” pres­i­dent of JTUM An­cel Ro­get said.

Ro­get, the chair of the meet­ing, re­vealed that if their re­quest is not met like times in the past then they will act ac­cord­ing­ly, but he re­fused to re­veal how.

“The ef­fec­tive­ness of a plan is the el­e­ment of sur­prise, we will re­group and we would put to­geth­er a co­gent plan, “he said.

Ro­get said em­ploy­ees are owed in some in­stance four pe­ri­ods of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and they have re­quest­ed a meet­ing with the min­is­ter of fi­nance Colm Im­bert three times but got no re­spons­es.

“If peo­ple do not want to lis­ten well it’s not my...I am not at lib­er­ty this morn­ing to an­nounce what will hap­pen but rest as­sured through our de­lib­er­a­tion and plan­ning some­thing has to hap­pen to break this dead­lock and have those in au­thor­i­ty pay the re­spect to all of the work­ers and all of the trade unions in this coun­try,” he said.

An­oth­er is­sue raised at the three-hour-long vir­tu­al ral­ly themed ‘Unite to Fight’ was, ac­cord­ing to the union­ists, that em­ploy­ers were us­ing the pan­dem­ic to en­gage in mass re­trench­ment and take ad­van­tage of work­ers, some­thing they said they will not al­low to con­tin­ue.

“COVID or no COVID, their agen­da con­tin­ues so we must not stop. Those who stand against what we rep­re­sent are us­ing this time to do what they want­ed for quite a while,” Ro­get said.

He said these is­sues start­ed long be­fore COVID-19 and if Gov­ern­ment took their ad­vice in the past this coun­try’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion would not be where it is to­day.

“There is ab­solute­ly no re­spect for those play­ing a ma­jor part for those turn­ing the wheels of the econ­o­my,” Ro­get said.

NATUC pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke called for more meet­ings like to­day’s ral­ly, while pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of All Trinidad Gen­er­al Work­er’s Trade Union Nir­van Ma­haraj said its time to unite.

“With one voice and one shout, no re­treat and no sur­ren­der,” pres­i­dent of the Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union said.

TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah De Fre­itas s promised teach­ers that they will work to rec­ti­fy all out­stand­ing is­sues as she plans to ap­proach this year as a union leader with, “smoke in the front and fire be­hind.”

From 9 am to­day the unions will par­tic­i­pate in a mo­tor­cade from San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain.

“We are alive and we are here and you know what we are rel­e­vant,” he said.