426 retrenched in private sector last year

The dis­clo­sure of 426 pri­vate sec­tor re­trench­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2025, record­ed un­der the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act (RS­BA), lays bare a par­tial but telling snap­shot of labour dis­place­ment at a time of eco­nom­ic ad­just­ment, cor­po­rate re­struc­tur­ing and grow­ing pres­sure on the leg­isla­tive frame­work gov­ern­ing re­dun­dan­cy.

The da­ta, re­leased by the Min­istry of Labour, Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, spans com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing across telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, man­u­fac­tur­ing, en­er­gy and fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tors that have his­tor­i­cal­ly an­chored for­mal em­ploy­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Among the larg­er record­ed re­duc­tions are Dig­i­cel (T&T) Lim­it­ed with 40 re­trench­ments across mul­ti­ple re­port­ing pe­ri­ods; SMJ Lim­it­ed with 23; Hol­i­day Snacks Lim­it­ed al­so with 23; Nestlé T&T Ltd with 14; BP Trinidad and To­ba­go LLC with 30; and Laugh­lin and De Gannes Ltd with 41 across three re­port­ing pe­ri­ods. Small­er re­duc­tions were al­so record­ed at Massy Au­to­mo­tive, The Home Store Lim­it­ed, Su­pe­ri­or En­er­gy Ser­vices Trinidad Lim­it­ed and Sco­tia­bank T&T Ltd.

Five of the com­pa­nies were rep­re­sent­ed by recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty trade unions, while the re­main­ing cas­es op­er­at­ed out­side that frame­work, where con­sul­ta­tion process­es tend to be less struc­tured and, in some in­stances, more lim­it­ed.

A to­tal of 42 mat­ters were for­mal­ly re­port­ed to the Min­istry un­der the RS­BA. Of these, 16 re­sult­ed in Cer­tifi­cates of Un­re­solved Dis­putes, 19 re­main on­go­ing, five were re­solved, and two were with­drawn.

The Min­istry’s role, how­ev­er, re­mains strict­ly ad­min­is­tra­tive. It re­ceives no­ti­fi­ca­tions and fa­cil­i­tates dis­pute path­ways once trig­gered, but does not in­ves­ti­gate breach­es un­der the Act or de­ter­mine whether re­trench­ment ex­er­cis­es were prop­er­ly jus­ti­fied.

No re­trench­ment ex­er­cis­es were re­port­ed from pub­lic sec­tor en­ti­ties dur­ing the pe­ri­od. How­ev­er, pub­lic bod­ies are not re­quired to no­ti­fy the Min­istry of work­force re­duc­tions aris­ing from con­tract non-re­new­al, vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion or ear­ly re­tire­ment, a gap which con­tin­ues to lim­it the com­plete­ness of of­fi­cial labour mar­ket da­ta.

Labour spe­cial­ist Trevor John­son told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the 426 fig­ure re­flects on­ly those cas­es meet­ing the le­gal de­f­i­n­i­tion of re­trench­ment and for­mal­ly re­port­ed un­der the Act, ex­clud­ing oth­er forms of job loss that fall out­side its scope.

“426 per­sons in some quar­ters may sound small, but any loss of job, whether via re­dun­dan­cy and ul­ti­mate­ly re­trench­ment, can be sig­nif­i­cant, es­pe­cial­ly if you re­late it to the sec­tor where the re­trench­ment may have tak­en place,” John­son not­ed.

He point­ed to the pres­ence of well-es­tab­lished, rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing firms with­in the list as a point that war­rants clos­er scruti­ny.

“There are a few, I sup­pose, eye­brow-rais­ing en­ti­ties, en­ti­ties that we know, for ex­am­ple, are prof­it-mak­ing, and one won­ders what would have trig­gered that re­trench­ment,” John­son stat­ed.

He said re­trench­ment de­ci­sions are rarely dri­ven by a sin­gle fac­tor, but rather a com­bi­na­tion of struc­tur­al and op­er­a­tional pres­sures.

“Re­trench­ment is not just or­gan­i­sa­tions look­ing at the bot­tom line. They may look at tech­no­log­i­cal changes that might have tak­en place. They may look at whether they want to out­source, eco­nom­ic fac­tors, and changes of own­er­ship. There might be a num­ber of rea­sons why an or­gan­i­sa­tion may put for­ward re­struc­tur­ing,” the labour spe­cial­ist in­di­cat­ed.

No­tably, the of­fi­cial dis­clo­sure does not in­clude the rea­sons ad­vanced by com­pa­nies when sub­mit­ting no­ti­fi­ca­tions to the Min­is­ter, leav­ing the un­der­ly­ing dri­vers large­ly ab­sent from the pub­lic record.

John­son al­so cau­tioned against view­ing the fig­ure in iso­la­tion, ar­gu­ing that it does not cap­ture the full scale of labour dis­place­ment across the wider econ­o­my.

“We all know more sig­nif­i­cant num­bers have lost their jobs in 2025. If you were to take a look at, for ex­am­ple, Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), they don’t fall un­der that strict de­f­i­n­i­tion, but I don’t think we could ig­nore the fact that a larg­er num­ber of per­sons than that did in fact lose their jobs,” John­son said.

He fur­ther point­ed to the grow­ing in­flu­ence of tech­nol­o­gy on em­ploy­ment pat­terns.

“We are see­ing that some jobs are be­ing lost as a re­sult of ad­vanced au­toma­tion and AI. This is some­thing that, as a so­ci­ety, we have to look at, be­cause I don’t think when the Act was craft­ed over 30 years ago that one would have been con­sid­er­ing these sig­nif­i­cant ad­vance­ments,” John­son said.

In his view, there is a widen­ing dis­con­nect be­tween the speed of tech­no­log­i­cal change and the le­gal frame­work meant to reg­u­late em­ploy­ment pro­tec­tions.

“Tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments al­ways seem to out­strip the leg­isla­tive arrange­ment. Very of­ten, you have tech­no­log­i­cal shifts, and the leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing that area is out­dat­ed,” John­son said.

The FOIA dis­clo­sure al­so does not in­di­cate whether re­trenched work­ers ac­tu­al­ly re­ceived sev­er­ance pay­ments, nor does it pro­vide time­lines for dis­pute res­o­lu­tion. It out­lines pro­ce­dur­al out­comes, but stops short of track­ing en­force­ment or com­pli­ance in any mean­ing­ful way.

John­son said this re­mains a crit­i­cal blind spot.

“It would be in­ter­est­ing to see how many of these 426 work­ers were ac­tu­al­ly in re­ceipt of sev­er­ance pay. The doc­u­ment iden­ti­fies the num­bers but doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly speak to a guar­an­tee that all of these work­ers would have ac­tu­al­ly been in re­ceipt of sev­er­ance,” he said.

He not­ed that there have been long­stand­ing in­stances where work­ers wait years to re­ceive sev­er­ance fol­low­ing re­trench­ment, ex­pos­ing the gap be­tween statu­to­ry en­ti­tle­ment and lived re­al­i­ty.

Union­i­sa­tion re­mains an­oth­er di­vid­ing line. On­ly five of the com­pa­nies list­ed fall un­der recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union arrange­ments, which typ­i­cal­ly pro­vide struc­tured con­sul­ta­tion and re­dun­dan­cy pro­ce­dures.

“Where you have a recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union, there are claus­es in the col­lec­tive agree­ment that make it manda­to­ry for the or­gan­i­sa­tion to en­gage the union in dis­cus­sions as to why it is nec­es­sary to have this re­dun­dan­cy,” John­son said.

In non-unionised en­vi­ron­ments, how­ev­er, con­sul­ta­tion can be in­con­sis­tent or min­i­mal.

“In T&T, the process of get­ting recog­ni­tion for a group of work­ers can go on for a num­ber of years, four, five, six, sev­en, up to 10 years. That is un­ac­cept­able,” John­son said.

He ar­gued that de­lays in union recog­ni­tion con­tin­ue to weak­en the bal­ance of pow­er in re­dun­dan­cy sit­u­a­tions.

The Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fit (Amend­ment) Bill 2026, now be­fore Par­lia­ment, seeks to over­haul a sys­tem that has re­mained large­ly un­changed for decades, de­spite shifts in the struc­ture of work and the econ­o­my.

Pi­lot­ing the Bill in the Up­per House last Fri­day, Min­is­ter of Labour Leroy Bap­tiste framed the re­form as both nec­es­sary and over­due.

“It is a re­cal­i­bra­tion of our statu­to­ry regime, align­ing T&T with in­ter­na­tion­al labour stan­dards,” Bap­tiste said.

He point­ed to what he de­scribed as key de­fi­cien­cies in the cur­rent Act, par­tic­u­lar­ly its lim­it­ed de­f­i­n­i­tion of re­trench­ment.

“The de­f­i­n­i­tion of re­trench­ment is too nar­row, ex­clud­ing cor­po­rate col­lapse. This bill broad­ens it to en­com­pass in­sol­ven­cy, clo­sure, re­ceiver­ship, sale of busi­ness, au­toma­tion, eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion, or forced with­draw­al,” Bap­tiste said.

The Min­is­ter al­so ac­knowl­edged that ex­ist­ing thresh­olds for pro­tec­tion have been flagged for re­view, sig­nalling fur­ther changes ahead as the leg­is­la­tion moves through Par­lia­ment.