PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Oct 27, CMC -Trade unions were on Tuesday drumming up support for a “protest” march on Friday insisting that the event should not be viewed as political, but rather to address various issues in Trinidad and Tobago, including crime and unemployment.
But Friday’s protest will not be attended by the powerful Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU), whose president general, Ancel Roget, has already indicated that is the union’s right not to attend.
“We will be very busy preparing for these negotiations,” he told reporters.
The Public Services Association (PSA), led by Felisha Thomas, has so far not indicated whether it too would opt out of the protest.
The protest had originally been scheduled for last Friday, but was pushed back due to the funeral service of the late Calypso Monarch, Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow, who died in New York last month.
General Secretary of the National Trade Union Centre of Trinidad and Tobago (NATUC), Michael Annisette, said the workers would take their grievances to the streets demanding progress on unresolved wage negotiations, outstanding salary arrears and the plight of displaced workers.
Annisette said the grievances extend beyond wages and arrears to include workers who remain displaced, employees still earning salaries based on 2013 rates and unresolved collective bargaining agreements.
Finance Minister Davendranath Tancoo said funding had been allocated in the TT$63.6 billion (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) national budget approved by Parliament last weekend to address outstanding public-sector wage obligations, including a proposal to pay 40 per cent of certain arrears in cash, with the remainder settled through non-cash benefits over three years.
Secretary General of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Joanne Ogeer, speaking on a radio programme here Tuesday, said that the march is open to “everybody who believes that …they have a reason to march.
“Now, when we say come out Friday, and let me just say, we are not just using the avenues to beg people to come out there because we are receiving good feedback,” she said, adding that in a recent conversation with another trade unionist, they were of the opinion that the “ground was hurting.
“ And the ground hurting because we feel as if this, this is a government that is not listening. And even if they are hearing…you could hear, but not listening,” she said, adding that “ there are some persons who have worked for excessive periods and have not received a cent to this day”.
She told radio listeners that the former government had also adopted a similar position to the current Kamla Persad-Bissessar government forcing the unions to take industrial action.
“We made the same calls, we protested…they didn’t have interest in the union because at the end of the day, they probably thought they would have never lost the election,” she said, adding that “of course, when you’re in opposition, you are the greatest friend now to the unions”.
Ogeer told radio listeners that members of the ruling United National Congress (UNC) “were reaching out to the union and we used to have conversations with them and it’s happening now, but at the end of the day, we will not be used.
“ We represent workers and we are independent trade unions. Whether people want to say we are PNM (opposition People’s National Movement) or not, we will push back. We will retaliate and we will advocate against any government that comes and sits in the seat of democracy and wage any type of oppression against workers,” Ogeer added.
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