T&T: Protest over 1% offer Unions: Stay home tomorrow

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hat was the call being echoed by several of this country's trade union representatives yesterday, as they condemned the one per cent offer made to the Public Services Association (PSA) by the Chief Personnel Officer Stephanie Lewis during the last round of negotiations for the period 2008 to 2010.

At a meeting to discuss the status of wage negotiations at the PSA's Rooftop in Port of Spain yesterday, the union representatives – including members from the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union (OWTU), Amalgamated Workers Union, Communication Workers Union (CWU), Banking, Insurance and General Workers' Union (BIGWU), National Trade Union, Medical Professionals Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MPATT), Fire Service Association, Prison Services Association, Estate Police Association, Government and Industrial General Workers Union (GIGWU), Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) and the National Union of Government and Federated Workers (NUGFW) – called on Government to give the PSA a better offer or face a complete shut down of the country.

"All around, this struggle has a link in what is going on ... and we are saying to workers, if you get up Tuesday morning and you have any problems coming to work, you should stay home and see about your children. If WASA down (and you have no water), if you getting problem with transport, stay home," said BIGWU president Vincent Cabrera.
He said if such an offer is allowed to take place, then all workers, unionised or not, could be faced with similar increases and "disrespect from their employers".
"The trade union movement isn't simply coming together because we want to cause trouble ... what we are saying is that all of us are going to be faced with this same one per cent, so it is not that we have any sort of agenda, it's that we have a genuine situation that we have to deal with," he said.

PSA president Watson Duke, who commended the unions for joining their cause, said the unification "makes them stronger today" than they have ever been and called on all public servants to be ready to battle come tomorrow morning. He said the CPO needs to understand that "one per cent is not an offer but a provocative insult" to all workers across Trinidad and Tobago and he called on the CPO to make it right.

"As we move towards the negotiating table Tuesday ... the CPO needs to remove that one per cent and place a double digit figure on the table, as workers today, albeit public or private, do not have the same purchasing power they had several years ago," Duke said.

OWTU vice president Ancel Roget also said he found the Central Bank's announcement last Thursday that headline inflation fell to 13.2 per cent in September "very strange", noting that just as they have been clamouring for increased wages because of increased inflation the rate drops.

"In the face of our demands for a proper and decent wage adjustment at the bargaining table, you have figures being produced by the Central Bank that does not square with the reality that meets you at the grocery and at the hardware, where your real purchasing power has been reduced over the last three or four years," he said.

Head of MPATT, Dr Colin Furlonge, said it seemed as if the Government had "used" and "abused" the people by failing to meet expectations.
"Many of us voted on that basis, the basis that we expected and had high expectations, and on the basis that we had reason to have proud and good optimism. We are not yet seeing that. In fact, to many of us, we are worried that those high expectations have been left behind and the optimism which we share is being gradually and slowly, but definitely reduced," Furlonge said.

President of the Estate Police Association, Eddison Munro, called on National Security Minister, Brigadier John Sandy, to take a second look at the 500 listed security firms, as many of them were operating without the proper certificates and training. Noting Government's intention to launch the Private Security Network Commission (PSNC) pilot project aimed at reducing crime, Munro said, "The Minister of National Security must intervene now to fix the security industry if they are serious because the officers out there, and we have a number of complaints that officers out there carry firearms without even having a firearm certificate just because the companies want to get the job and this is a serious concern," he said.

In a telephone interview yesterday, Finance Minister Winston Dookeran, under whose portfolio wage increases for public servants fall, was only prepared to say that "negotiations are underway, there is a process and hopefully rationality will prevail".