Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

With wage ar­rears stretch­ing back near­ly a decade for some work­ers, trade unions are sig­nalling es­ca­la­tion in protest ac­tion as the Gov­ern­ment re­mains silent on when out­stand­ing pub­lic sec­tor salary in­creas­es will be paid.

The Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union (CGW­TU) yes­ter­day warned of pos­si­ble in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, as more than 1,000 work­ers at­tached to the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion have not yet be­gun to get long-out­stand­ing wage in­creas­es.

CGW­TU pres­i­dent Er­mine De Bique-Meade said af­fect­ed work­ers—rang­ing from dai­ly-paid and ca­su­al em­ploy­ees to re­tirees—have re­ceived no pay­ments to date, al­though an agree­ment cov­er­ing 2014–2016 and 2017–2019 was signed on April 24, 2025.

“Noth­ing. The work­ers haven’t got­ten any­thing,” De Bique-Meade said, adding the union is now mo­bil­is­ing its mem­ber­ship due to the de­lay.

She said the union is giv­ing Gov­ern­ment un­til the open­ing of Par­lia­ment to make a clear pro­nounce­ment on the pay­ments.

“We are wait­ing to hear what the pro­nounce­ment by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will be as it re­lates to these out­stand­ing pay­ments to our mem­bers, who are dai­ly-paid work­ers of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion,” she said.

She said there has been no feed­back from the CPO, the Min­istry of Fi­nance or the cor­po­ra­tion it­self. She said the CPO has in­di­cat­ed all re­quired doc­u­men­ta­tion was sub­mit­ted and the mat­ter was be­fore Par­lia­ment.

“So, it is wait­ing now for the min­is­ter to give the pro­nounce­ment that it should be paid,” she added.

She warned that if Par­lia­ment re­opens and the is­sue re­mains un­re­solved, the union will be forced to es­ca­late mat­ters.

“Then the onus will be on me as pres­i­dent to call a meet­ing of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion branch, and com­ing out of that meet­ing, we will de­cide the way for­ward,” she said. “It is un­bear­able at this stage.”

She al­so re­vealed that the union is sched­uled to meet with Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Khadi­jah Ameen to­day for the first time since she as­sumed of­fice, fol­low­ing re­peat­ed at­tempts to en­gage her on sev­er­al is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers.

“We had writ­ten her on many is­sues when she took of­fice and she nev­er en­gaged the union. We wrote a sec­ond let­ter and she nev­er en­gaged the union. It’s on­ly yes­ter­day (Tues­day) that she in­di­cat­ed she’s will­ing to meet with us,” De Bique-Meade said.

She con­firmed that the wage is­sue will again be raised at that meet­ing.

An es­ti­mat­ed 1,200 work­ers—in­clud­ing per­ma­nent, reg­u­lar and ca­su­al em­ploy­ees, as well as re­tirees—are af­fect­ed by the out­stand­ing pay­ments.

On Mon­day, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevon Ashe said a meet­ing in­volv­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al was sched­uled for yes­ter­day to ad­dress long-stand­ing con­cerns raised by unions.

Ashe said the dis­cus­sions were ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on salary ad­just­ments fol­low­ing the sign­ing of new col­lec­tive agree­ments last year. How­ev­er, unions re­main with­out clear guid­ance on when the agreed in­creas­es will be im­ple­ment­ed. He said teach­ers were al­ready wear­ing red in protest over the de­lay and they will in­ten­si­fy the ac­tion if the is­sue is not ad­dressed.