Contractors’ union boss wants backpay before Christmas too

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union (CGW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Er­mine De Bique-Meade is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to pay her mem­bers their out­stand­ing back­pay be­fore Christ­mas.

“We need cash. We need it bad­ly. We need it now or be­fore De­cem­ber 22,” De Bique-Meade said at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the union’s head­quar­ters on Rush­worth Street, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day.

She de­mand­ed that Gov­ern­ment ho­n­our the two col­lec­tive agree­ments signed in April for the pe­ri­ods 2014-2016 and 2017-2019 for a four per cent in­crease, in­clu­sive of out­stand­ing ar­rears and ad­just­ed salaries for 800 San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion dai­ly-paid work­ers.

Fol­low­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion’s (PSA) sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment with Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al for a ten per cent in­crease, with a promise of back­pay be­fore Christ­mas, De Bique-Meade said she wrote to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo call­ing on him to pay the SFCC work­ers their ar­rears be­fore De­cem­ber 22.

She al­so called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, with whom she claimed to have had sev­er­al dis­cus­sions pri­or to the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, to in­ter­vene. “We are now call­ing on her and the lit­tle that I know about her, I be­lieve that she will in­ter­vene and she would do what is right.”

She said the work­ers are will­ing to ac­cept part of their ar­rears, but on­ly in cash.

“We are be­ing le­nient. Give them some­thing. We want some­thing be­fore Christ­mas,” De Bique-Meade said.

She added that as­sur­ances were giv­en that the work­ers’ new wage rates would have been im­ple­ment­ed by Au­gust, but that failed to hap­pen.

While mak­ing it clear that they sup­port the PSA whole­heart­ed­ly, De Bique-Meade not­ed that the PSA signed their agree­ment days ago, while they signed theirs more than five months ago.

“What we don’t like is the man­ner in which the CPO and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance are treat­ing our mem­bers, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that it was not two days, one day, or a week; it was months, and, in fact, the min­is­ter was aware be­fore the bud­get and we were told that this was fac­tor­ing in the bud­get. Now that the bud­get has been read and they have set­tled down, they have for­got­ten about the dai­ly-paid work­ers of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion,” she said.

Re­mind­ing the min­is­ter of the dis­cus­sions they had pri­or to the elec­tions, De Bique-Meade said, “When you all need­ed us, we were there. We need you all now and I need you all to pay my mem­bers.”

Claim­ing that she had been in con­stant con­tact with the CPO, she said when she told him pre­vi­ous­ly that she was go­ing to call a me­dia con­fer­ence on this mat­ter, he asked her to hold her hand, as he was speak­ing with the min­is­ter. How­ev­er, she said she had re­ceived no feed­back since then.

She al­so ques­tioned why the CPO failed to pro­vide the SFCC with copies of the signed col­lec­tive agree­ments or give any di­rec­tive on how to pro­ceed.

Not­ing that the State of Emer­gency was the on­ly rea­son they had not protest­ed in front of Par­lia­ment, she added, “We do not in­tend to sit idly by.”

In his Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Tan­coo an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment would rat­i­fy the col­lec­tive agree­ments signed in April be­tween the CPO and the Teach­ing Ser­vice, the T&T De­fence Force, and the Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tions.

He ex­plained that the re­cur­rent cost of im­ple­ment­ing the agree­ments was es­ti­mat­ed at $214 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, with ar­rears of $750 mil­lion as of De­cem­ber 2025.

At­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to con­tact the min­is­ter and the CPO on their cell­phones for a re­sponse were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.