The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus faces a com­plete shut­down to­day as the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) in­ten­si­fies its protest.

The union is urg­ing the uni­ver­si­ty’s man­age­ment and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert to fi­nalise ne­go­ti­a­tions swift­ly. In a show of frus­tra­tion, work­ers con­front­ed cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine at her of­fice, de­mand­ing ac­tion to ad­dress their con­cerns and re­solve the on­go­ing is­sues.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, WIGUT pres­i­dent Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said, “A to­tal shut­down of all sys­tems and op­er­a­tions has been called at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus. The protest isn’t lim­it­ed to lec­tur­ers; it in­cludes aca­d­e­m­ic, se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tive, and pro­fes­sion­al staff from var­i­ous de­part­ments, such as the reg­istry, bur­sary, IT, and stu­dent ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

WIGUT is en­cour­ag­ing those who must be present for es­sen­tial ser­vices to wear black in sol­i­dar­i­ty, sym­bol­is­ing “Black­out Fri­day.” This call to ac­tion co­in­cides with the fi­nal day of teach­ing for the se­mes­ter, af­ter which stu­dents will be­gin their break next week, with ex­ams sched­uled to start in the first week of De­cem­ber.

The UWI work­ers were of­fered a two per cent in­crease from the Gov­ern­ment and are cur­rent­ly ne­go­ti­at­ing for the 2015 to 2017 col­lec­tive pe­ri­od.

Ram­per­sad ex­pressed the chal­lenges her mem­bers face liv­ing on 2014 salaries amidst ris­ing in­fla­tion and in­creased liv­ing costs. She not­ed that mem­bers at oth­er UWI cam­pus­es in the re­gion earn sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than those in T&T.

The union ex­pects more ac­tion in 2025, as the lec­tur­ers in­tend to with­hold ex­am­i­na­tion marks. “Marks are typ­i­cal­ly due by the end of the first week of Jan­u­ary, which means lec­tur­ers are ex­pect­ed to be grad­ing dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son while oth­ers en­joy fes­tiv­i­ties with cake, ponche de crème, and sor­rel. So come Jan­u­ary, it’s go­ing to be prob­a­bly more black­out and no grades,” she said.

This ac­tion, she em­pha­sised, will dis­rupt stu­dents’ abil­i­ty to progress to their next se­mes­ters. WIGUT stressed that stu­dents are not the tar­gets of their protests, which are aimed at press­ing the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the long-stand­ing is­sue of work­ing on 2014 salaries. The union lead­ers have de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a trav­es­ty of jus­tice.

They said par­ents are feel­ing the im­pact, as many of them face sim­i­lar fi­nan­cial strug­gles.

The work­ers are call­ing for the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to meet with them.

Prin­ci­pal wants Im­bert to meet work­ers amid fi­nan­cial cri­sis

Speak­ing to the me­dia, Prof An­toine ac­knowl­edged the cam­pus’ fi­nan­cial con­straints and as­sured the work­ers that she would in­vite Min­is­ter Im­bert to meet with them to dis­cuss their griev­ances.

Re­spond­ing to the work­ers’ planned ac­tion, she added, “When a lec­tur­er lec­tures—and I used to be one, as you know—we teach peo­ple in a class and cre­ate ex­am pa­pers. It’s very dif­fi­cult for some­one else to come in and ex­am­ine those stu­dents and still be fair to them. Lec­tur­ers, if they do that, are fac­ing a big blow to the sys­tem and the stu­dents. You can’t just call in the army like oth­er sec­tors might do to han­dle this.

“We have many ex­perts in their fields on cam­pus. In some cas­es, we might have on­ly one per­son in the en­tire UWI for a cer­tain sub­ject. For ex­am­ple, we have the on­ly pro­fes­sor of as­tron­o­my in the en­tire re­gion. If she goes on strike—please, I’m not sug­gest­ing any­one go on strike—but se­ri­ous­ly, who else could step in? We have a lot of spe­cial­ists and ex­perts here. It’s not sim­ply a mat­ter of Googling the an­swers. It’s much more com­plex than that.”

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the cam­pus ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team said, “No prin­ci­pal or em­ploy­er can rest easy when protests oc­cur. We wor­ry about our stu­dents, who are the ones most im­pact­ed by such ac­tion. It dis­rupts their aca­d­e­m­ic ex­pe­ri­ence, cre­at­ing anx­i­ety dur­ing a crit­i­cal time. Yet, we un­der­stand and em­pathise deeply with the frus­tra­tion of our staff stem­ming from the decade-long de­lay in re­solv­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The pro­longed hard­ship and un­cer­tain­ty are ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the ris­ing cost of liv­ing in the post-COVID era, which has in­ten­si­fied fi­nan­cial pres­sures on all cat­e­gories of staff.

“For over two years, my man­age­ment has been fol­low­ing up dili­gent­ly on out­stand­ing pro­pos­als. We have been en­cour­aged by pos­i­tive as­sur­ances in the na­tion­al bud­get and in meet­ings. How­ev­er, as the teach­ing term con­cludes and ex­am­i­na­tions be­gin, the lack of con­crete re­spons­es or gains has height­ened con­cerns. The an­guish is deep­ened be­cause both Cave Hill, Bar­ba­dos, and Mona, Ja­maica, which be­gan ne­go­ti­a­tions long af­ter St Au­gus­tine, have con­clud­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly and re­ceived gen­er­ous in­creas­es.”

Prof An­toine al­so added, “Those coun­tries recog­nised the valu­able con­tri­bu­tions that the UWI con­tin­ues to bring to their coun­tries and re­gion, con­tribut­ing di­rect­ly to the GDP. St Au­gus­tine staff re­mains the poor­est in the UWI­verse. The re­sult is in­creas­ing at­tri­tion of staff and in­creased dif­fi­cul­ty to at­tract qual­i­ty staff.”

Yes­ter­day the cam­pus prin­ci­pal urged those re­spon­si­ble for the re­gion­al cam­pus to take a con­cert­ed look in­to UWI af­fairs be­cause the uni­ver­si­ty is at a cross­roads.

“As a na­tion and as a re­gion, it’s not just in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but our sit­u­a­tion is the worst of all. I think we need to have a se­ri­ous re­think or a recom­mit­ment to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in the re­gion and the role of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Prof An­toine added, “We can fold. Uni­ver­si­ties all over the world, some long­stand­ing, have fold­ed … We are at a cross­roads.”

The cam­pus prin­ci­pal not­ed that the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus has been im­ple­ment­ing in­no­v­a­tive mea­sures to keep the uni­ver­si­ty afloat, but the need for sup­port must be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

The prin­ci­pal re­vealed, “In all sites, we are be­ing hit, and we still have mil­lions and mil­lions, in fact, over a bil­lion dol­lars, in fees to col­lect, along with a whole host of things that we have to deal with at the same time, which makes it a very, very wor­ri­some sit­u­a­tion.”

Guardian Me­dia sub­mit­ted ques­tions re­gard­ing the work­ers’ re­quest to meet with Min­is­ter Im­bert to the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, but there was no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.