The re­sponse by gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees to the call to stay away from work to­day and march through Port-of-Spain to protest the two per cent wage of­fer from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) will be a good gauge of the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate in the coun­try.

The ac­tiv­i­ty is meant to send a strong sig­nal to the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion of the strong re­jec­tion of a counter-pro­pos­al made last week by CPO Dr Daryl Din­di­al to ini­tial pro­pos­als for dou­ble-dig­it in­creas­es from pub­lic-sec­tor unions.

At the fore­front of to­day’s demon­stra­tion will be the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), rep­re­sen­ta­tives of dai­ly paid work­ers, while the coun­try’s largest pub­lic-sec­tor union, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), has in­di­cat­ed that its mem­bers will al­so be protest­ing.

Suc­cess, from the unions’ per­spec­tive, will re­quire a strong turnout for the protest march and ral­ly and suf­fi­cient sup­port for the call to boy­cott work to bring ac­tiv­i­ties at gov­ern­ment work­places to a halt. A mas­sive show of strength, in con­trast to the usu­al small plac­ard demon­stra­tions, will be a sig­nif­i­cant bar­gain­ing strat­e­gy that will re­in­force de­mands for high­er wages.

How­ev­er, in re­cent years, unions have been hard-pressed to elic­it more than luke­warm re­spons­es to their calls for protest ac­tion.

There was a time when trade unions were guar­an­teed huge sup­port for their protests. In the ear­ly days of trade union­ism, mass protests were ex­treme­ly suc­cess­ful, with hun­dreds of work­ers march­ing through the streets to press their de­mands for bet­ter terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment.

But the play­ing field has changed over the years. Trade union mem­ber­ship has been de­clin­ing and the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions agen­da is now in­flu­enced by is­sues over which trade unions and em­ploy­ers have lit­tle con­trol—glob­al­i­sa­tion and trade lib­er­al­i­sa­tion.

How­ev­er, these new re­al­i­ties are not ac­knowl­edged by labour lead­ers, who are still more in­clined to con­flict rather than co­op­er­a­tion and do not fac­tor in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, com­pet­i­tive­ness and work­place trans­for­ma­tion in their pro­pos­als on be­half of work­ers.

Usu­al­ly, protests of the type be­ing staged to­day are not rolled out this ear­ly in the bar­gain­ing process. There has not been a break­down in talks, as the next round of ne­go­ti­a­tions with the CPO has al­ready been sched­uled for next month.

But there seems to be a de­ter­mi­na­tion by the union to press their de­mands, as they have been em­pha­sis­ing the ex­tent to which their mem­bers are strug­gling with the ris­ing cost of food, fu­el prices and oth­er ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties. They have al­so kept at the fore­front the fact that pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees have not had a pay in­crease since 2013.

So, this time around, they have made an ear­ly start with their pre­ferred bar­gain­ing stance of ne­go­ti­at­ing wages and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment for their mem­bers, adopt­ing the con­fronta­tion­al ap­proach and fo­cus­ing on high­er wages and salaries.

This marks a tor­rid start to ne­go­ti­a­tions which are like­ly to be pro­tract­ed giv­en the is­sues put on the ta­ble and a his­to­ry of less than cor­dial en­gage­ments be­tween the gov­ern­ment and pub­lic sec­tor unions.

In this tense in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate, on all sides, the strug­gle has on­ly just be­gun.