Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Af­ter protest ac­tion that threat­ened to dis­rupt a cam­pus coun­cil meet­ing yes­ter­day, ad­min­is­tra­tive staff and dai­ly paid work­ers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of The West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus have fi­nal­ly got­ten a long-await­ed meet­ing with man­age­ment to dis­cuss wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Led by the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), the work­ers marched through the cam­pus to the TLC Build­ing, where the uni­ver­si­ty man­age­ment was hold­ing its cam­pus coun­cil meet­ing, de­mand­ing the res­o­lu­tion of long-over­due wage ne­go­ti­a­tions dat­ing back to 2015.

UWI OW­TU branch pres­i­dent Curt Stew­art de­scribed the pro­longed de­lays as a “to­tal dis­re­spect and to­tal dis­re­gard” for work­ers.

Stew­art said, “From June to now, the on­ly re­sponse we’ve re­ceived is ‘no.’ There has been no prop­er di­a­logue with the union.

“We have three out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, go­ing all the way back to 2015, with the last one in 2025,” Stew­art said.

“Right now, we are ne­go­ti­at­ing for the 2015–2017 pe­ri­od for month­ly paid work­ers and the 2014–2016 pe­ri­od for dai­ly paid work­ers.”

Stew­art crit­i­cised the pro­longed process, ex­plain­ing that gov­ern­ment pro­pos­als on­ly cov­ered two ne­go­ti­a­tion pe­ri­ods over six years, while the union sought a res­o­lu­tion for the spe­cif­ic pe­ri­ods in ques­tion.

The OW­TU’s pro­pos­al in­clud­ed a six per cent wage in­crease, dis­trib­uted as two per cent per year over three years, with a con­sol­i­da­tion of ben­e­fits.

Stew­art said the af­fect­ed work­ers num­bered over 800 and in­clud­ed clean­ers, plumbers, elec­tri­cians, car­pen­ters, and tech­ni­cians. He stressed the crit­i­cal role these em­ploy­ees played in the uni­ver­si­ty’s op­er­a­tions.

“If we don’t have clean­ers, if the car­pen­ter doesn’t do their job, if the ma­son doesn’t work, if the ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant doesn’t ad­min­is­trate—noth­ing hap­pens,” he as­sert­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Stew­art, the es­ti­mat­ed cost of set­tling the work­ers’ de­mands was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4 mil­lion, which was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than the $6 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for oth­er set­tle­ments.

“Rather than pay­ing the small­er amount, they opt­ed for the larg­er sum, which doesn’t make sense,” the branch pres­i­dent ar­gued.

With the work­ers protest­ing out­side the build­ing, UWI Cam­pus Reg­is­trar Dr Dawn-Marie de Four-Gill con­firmed that a re­vised pro­pos­al had been sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and that fol­low-ups were on­go­ing.

“We are com­mit­ted to clos­ing off these ne­go­ti­a­tions suc­cess­ful­ly,” she said, em­pha­sis­ing ef­forts were be­ing made to ex­pe­dite the process.

The OW­TU has giv­en man­age­ment un­til next week to re­spond, warn­ing that if no progress is made, protests will in­ten­si­fy.

De Four-Gill added, “We have been fol­low­ing up very dili­gent­ly on it. Two tri­en­ni­ums. We will take it from there. I am com­mit­ted to meet­ing next week. And I am com­mit­ted to these ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

Last month, WIGUT pres­i­dent, Dr In­dera Ram­per­sad, ac­cept­ed Gov­ern­ment’s six per cent in­crease on be­half of lec­tur­ers.

The union set­tled for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2020.