NUFGW pushes for 10% pay rise for daily-paid workers

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers
@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUFGW) is mov­ing swift­ly to se­cure a ten per cent pay in­crease for the dai­ly-paid work­ers it rep­re­sents, with union lead­ers seek­ing an ear­ly meet­ing with Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Lt Cm­dr Dr Daryl Din­di­al.

Union pres­i­dent-gen­er­al Christo­pher Streete made the an­nounce­ment in a video post­ed on Face­book yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, un­der­scor­ing the ur­gency of the re­quest.

He not­ed that while the CPO op­er­ates un­der the di­rec­tion of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, the union has al­ready writ­ten to the min­is­ter re­quest­ing a meet­ing in ear­ly Jan­u­ary to dis­cuss the is­sue.

Streete ex­pressed con­fi­dence that an agree­ment could be reached quick­ly. “We are aim­ing for an ear­ly set­tle­ment. We will set­tle, and we will be en­ti­tled to our back pay,” he said.

The NUFGW rep­re­sents dai­ly-paid work­ers across sev­er­al key in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties (RHAs), and 12 of the 14 lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions in Trinidad, ex­clud­ing the San Fer­nan­do and Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tions.

Streete stressed that these work­ers are among the low­est earn­ers in the pub­lic ser­vice and are long over­due for a wage ad­just­ment.

He cau­tioned mem­bers not to be mis­led by ru­mours cir­cu­lat­ing pub­licly. “There are some trou­ble­some in­di­vid­u­als at­tempt­ing to mis­lead you about the 10 per cent in­crease and the ne­go­ti­a­tions. Our fo­cus is on de­liv­er­ing re­sults for you,” he said.

Streete al­so ad­vised work­ers to man­age their fi­nances pru­dent­ly when back pay is re­ceived. “Mon­ey has no ex­piry date. Not all of it should be spent at once,” he added.

Re­flect­ing on past ne­go­ti­a­tions, Streete said the NUFGW had re­ject­ed a four per cent wage in­crease of­fered un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, a de­ci­sion he said is now po­si­tion­ing the union for a bet­ter set­tle­ment.

“Be­cause we re­fused that of­fer, bet­ter things are on the hori­zon,” he said.

The NUFGW’s move comes as oth­er pub­lic ser­vice unions fi­nalise wage agree­ments. Ear­li­er this month, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the CPO signed a mem­o­ran­dum of agree­ment (MOA) cov­er­ing the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods 2014–2016 and 2017–2019, which in­clud­ed a ten per cent wage in­crease.

New salaries un­der that agree­ment are set to take ef­fect in Jan­u­ary, with retroac­tive al­lowances dat­ing back to Jan­u­ary 1, 2014. Part of the back pay is ex­pect­ed to be dis­bursed be­fore Christ­mas.

The agree­ment is ex­pect­ed to cost the State ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.8 bil­lion in back pay, with an ad­di­tion­al $420 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture go­ing for­ward.