CWU questions TSTT partnership with Montano amid wage talks

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union has raised con­cerns about TSTT’s new part­ner­ship with so­ca su­per­star Machel Mon­tano, ques­tion­ing how the com­pa­ny can en­ter a high-pro­file en­dorse­ment arrange­ment while cit­ing cash flow lim­i­ta­tions in on­go­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

In a state­ment dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 24, the union con­grat­u­lat­ed Mon­tano on his con­tin­ued cul­tur­al im­pact, de­scrib­ing him as a glob­al am­bas­sador for Trinidad and To­ba­go. It said it un­der­stood why TSTT, as a na­tion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider, would align its brand with a promi­nent cul­tur­al fig­ure.

How­ev­er, the union said the part­ner­ship must be viewed against the back­drop of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for the pe­ri­ods 2020 to 2022 and 2023 to 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to the union, TSTT has re­peat­ed­ly main­tained that fi­nan­cial con­straints pre­vent mean­ing­ful wage ad­just­ments. It said work­ers were pre­sent­ed with what it de­scribed as a one-time pay­ment of about $15,000, with no struc­tur­al salary in­crease.

The union said that of­fer came dur­ing a pe­ri­od of ris­ing in­fla­tion and in­creased cost of liv­ing and was viewed by em­ploy­ees as dis­mis­sive of their loy­al­ty and sac­ri­fice.

It asked how the com­pa­ny could rec­on­cile its stat­ed fi­nan­cial po­si­tion with what it de­scribed as the fi­nan­cial agili­ty re­quired to en­ter in­to a high-pro­file en­dorse­ment arrange­ment.

“Em­ploy­ees are en­ti­tled to un­der­stand the fi­nan­cial log­ic un­der­pin­ning these de­ci­sions,” the union stat­ed.

While sup­port­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships that dri­ve rev­enue growth and strength­en com­pet­i­tive­ness, the union said brand el­e­va­tion can­not come at the per­ceived ex­pense of in­vest­ment in per­son­nel.

It de­scribed em­ploy­ees as the com­pa­ny’s “en­gine room” and warned that cor­po­ra­tions can fal­ter be­cause of mis­aligned pri­or­i­ties and weak­ened in­ter­nal trust.

The union al­so raised ques­tions about the com­pa­ny’s in­de­pen­dence and gov­er­nance, ask­ing whether TSTT is op­er­at­ing as a com­mer­cial­ly vi­able en­ti­ty or is per­ceived as an ex­ten­sion of gov­ern­men­tal fis­cal pol­i­cy. It called for as­sur­ances that po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions are not in­flu­enc­ing strate­gic ap­point­ments in key de­part­ments and that any claims of fi­nan­cial hard­ship are ground­ed in au­dit­ed re­al­i­ty.

The union said work­ers are seek­ing clar­i­ty on the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion, for­ward pro­jec­tions and strate­gic roadmap. It added that em­ploy­ees want as­sur­ances that if prof­itabil­i­ty is de­clared, it will be shared eq­ui­tably, and that any de­clared loss­es are trans­par­ent and prop­er­ly ac­count­ed for.

The union said it re­mains com­mit­ted to con­struc­tive en­gage­ment and be­lieves TSTT can be prof­itable and in­no­v­a­tive. How­ev­er, it called on the com­pa­ny’s lead­er­ship and board to match their ex­ter­nal brand­ing com­mit­ments with in­ter­nal com­mit­ments to work­ers.

“Cor­po­rate suc­cess must be holis­tic. Cul­tur­al pride must be matched with cor­po­rate in­tegri­ty. And prof­itabil­i­ty must nev­er ex­clude the very peo­ple who make it pos­si­ble.”