“Present your­self for work!”

That was the stern ad­vice giv­en to un­vac­ci­nat­ed pub­lic sec­tor work­ers yes­ter­day from the Joint Trade Union Move­ment.

The union heads held a press con­fer­ence on the steps of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice in Port-of-Spain to raise their con­cerns about the gov­ern­ment plans to cre­ate safe zones in pub­lic of­fices. Ac­cord­ing to the pol­i­cy, work­ers must be vac­ci­nat­ed by mid-Jan­u­ary or if not, they will be fur­loughed—sent home with no pay.

Since the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the de­ci­sion has not been sit­ting well with the trade union move­ment.

The unions al­so met with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and even de­liv­ered a let­ter to the Prime Min­is­ter.

But yes­ter­day, Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers Unions and the Joint Trade Union Move­ment, An­cel Ro­get wants pub­lic work­ers who are both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed to re­port for work come Jan­u­ary 17, the first work­ing day af­ter the dead­line.

“I want to tell all work­ers do not be set up, present your­self for work on the 17th and con­tin­ue to present your­self. Let them de­ny you en­try in­to your place of work and that will be tan­ta­mount to il­le­gal lock­out which the trade union and our le­gal team is wait­ing to deal with those is­sues. I re­peat do not set up your­selves by stay­ing home present your­self to work, you are cur­rent­ly en­gaged with­in cer­tain terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment and there­fore that has not been rene­go­ti­at­ed by your union and there­fore you should go to work on the 17th of Jan­u­ary and let the gov­ern­ment lock you out of your em­ploy­ment.”

The unions have made it clear they are not against the COVID-19 vac­cines but pro-choice.

Ro­get added the de­ci­sion made by the Gov­ern­ment is im­pact­ing the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The in­tro­duc­tion of laws to treat with this will im­pact the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act, the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act, the OSH Act and the Pub­lic Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions among oth­ers. It is not a sim­ple thing as just say­ing get vac­ci­nat­ed and if you are not vac­ci­nat­ed you can­not work and that it is al­so il­le­gal to do that at it is tan­ta­mount to a lock­out. But this new law that they want to in­tro­duce is go­ing to in­ter­fere with many pro­vi­sions of our ex­ist­ing laws”, Ro­get said.

He added, “There­fore again, there can be no mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion if you have al­ready made up your mind more than that you have al­ready be­gun to im­ple­ment the de­ci­sion be­cause at T&TEC has al­ready be­gun re­quest­ing from work­ers that they show their vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus. MTS has al­ready be­gun along with SWM­COL and there­fore it is the heights of ar­ro­gance when you made a de­ci­sion and then tell us to come let’s talk, so we call again for the re­trac­tion and for them to de­sist and stand down.”

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment is al­so call­ing for the in­ter­ven­tion of the Min­is­ter of Labour Stephen Mc Clashie. The union wants the Min­is­ter to come for­ward and the union com­plained that since he has tak­en up of­fice he has not met with the labour move­ment.

Mean­while, the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre’s, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Michael An­nisette called on the work­ers to re­port to work and to not give the em­ploy­er their vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus say­ing it is per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

“I am telling work­ers do no pan­ic, let us stay to­geth­er. The gov­ern­ment is say­ing that they have a con­tin­gency plan so be it and I hope they have a con­tin­gency plan to of­fload car­go, to see about elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter and al­so to go in­to the hos­pi­tals and be nurs­es and doc­tors”, he said.

An­nisette said, “You can­not treat cit­i­zens with so much dis­dain and dis­re­spect and don’t ex­pect us to re­spond you are tak­ing bread and but­ter from the mouths of our chil­dren, it hurts that in the 21st cen­tu­ry a gov­ern­ment that looks like us is hurt­ing us.”

The Joint Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices al­so called on fire, prison and po­lice of­fi­cers not to heed any call to share vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus.

The trade union move­ment is ex­pect­ed to make a fur­ther state­ment on the pub­lic sec­tor safe zone po­lice lat­er this week.