Bacchanal over TSTT retreat

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]​​​​​​

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) is call­ing on Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Clyde El­der to in­ter­vene in the on­go­ing dis­pute be­tween the union and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), as ten­sions es­ca­late over ex­ec­u­tive spend­ing and stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said the union met with TSTT ear­li­er in the day to con­tin­ue wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, dur­ing which time the com­pa­ny sought to dis­miss me­dia re­ports about the cost of a re­cent ex­ec­u­tive re­treat.

“This morn­ing, we met at the Oval Box to con­tin­ue wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. The com­pa­ny made it clear to the union that the in­voic­es as stat­ed were over­priced or in­flat­ed and that the in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing was not cor­rect,” Ogeer said.

How­ev­er, she said the union im­me­di­ate­ly re­ject­ed that claim.

“Of course, the union re­butted one time and we told them that we ac­cuse them of be­ing liars, be­cause we al­so have copies of those in­voic­es and we can sub­stan­ti­ate that they are true,” she said.

The union’s com­ments fol­low an ex­clu­sive Sun­day Guardian re­port which re­vealed that TSTT was in­voiced $436,081.78 for a three-day ex­ec­u­tive re­treat in To­ba­go ear­li­er this year.

The all-in­clu­sive re­treat, from Jan­u­ary 16-18, in­volved act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Keino Cox and 10 ex­ec­u­tives and in­clud­ed ac­com­mo­da­tion, event pro­duc­tion, lo­gis­tics and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.

In­voic­es ob­tained by the Guardian’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk showed the ex­pens­es cov­ered more than $203,000 for event pro­duc­tion, $72,000 for ac­com­mo­da­tion and $38,000 for brand­ed items, with the fi­nal fig­ure ris­ing to over $436,000 af­ter VAT.

Ogeer al­so called on El­der, him­self a for­mer trade union­ist, to en­gage with the union on the mat­ter.

“We are dis­ap­point­ed be­cause we would imag­ine hav­ing sat in this seat and be­ing a ve­he­ment and vo­cif­er­ous sec­re­tary gen­er­al for six years, he would now lend to the ar­gu­ment and at least reach out and say ‘how best can I me­di­ate’,” Ogeer said.

Rather, she said the min­is­ter has not con­tact­ed the union since tak­ing of­fice.

“We have not seen that. We have not heard from him and we are of the im­pres­sion that maybe be­cause he has a dif­fer­ent hat on now, he may have turned his back on the move­ment,” she said.

Ogeer stressed that the union does not op­pose board re­treats or for­eign trav­el for ex­ec­u­tives but ob­ject­ed to what it de­scribed as ex­ces­sive spend­ing while wage ne­go­ti­a­tions re­main un­re­solved.

“Aus­ter­i­ty is nec­es­sary, but it must ap­ply to every­one,” she said.

The union al­so ques­tioned why work­ers have been asked to ac­cept min­i­mal com­pen­sa­tion pro­pos­als de­spite the com­pa­ny main­tain­ing what it de­scribed as “dis­cre­tionary spend­ing.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ogeer, the com­pa­ny’s lat­est of­fer in­cludes a one-time pay­ment of $15,000 with no in­creas­es in salaries, pen­sions, al­lowances or cost-of-liv­ing ad­just­ments. She not­ed that em­ploy­ees are cur­rent­ly work­ing on 2019 salary lev­els, while ne­go­ti­a­tions cov­er the pe­ri­ods 2020-2022 and 2023-2025.

Ogeer al­so raised con­cerns about work­ing con­di­tions at sev­er­al TSTT fa­cil­i­ties, al­leg­ing that some build­ings have been with­out air-con­di­tion­ing for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods and staff are op­er­at­ing in de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions. She said em­ploy­ee morale has de­clined sig­nif­i­cant­ly since the com­pa­ny’s re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cis­es in 2018 and 2022, which re­sult­ed in job cuts and re­duced staffing lev­els.

“The or­gan­i­sa­tion is now de­plet­ed with in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge,” Ogeer said, adding some em­ploy­ees are now per­form­ing the work of mul­ti­ple po­si­tions.

The union al­so ac­cused TSTT ex­ec­u­tives of ex­pand­ing se­nior po­si­tions and in­creas­ing the use of con­sul­tants while main­tain­ing the com­pa­ny faces fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

The CWU is al­so chal­leng­ing TSTT to pub­licly dis­close the full break­down of ex­pens­es as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­treat af­ter the com­pa­ny re­port­ed­ly claimed some fig­ures cir­cu­lat­ing in the pub­lic do­main were “in­flat­ed.”

“If you’re say­ing it is in­flat­ed, bring the in­voic­es to the ta­ble and show the pub­lic,” Ogeer said.

Ogeer said work­ers have ex­pressed frus­tra­tion fol­low­ing the Guardian Me­dia re­port on the re­treat and are call­ing for in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

“They are ready to rum­ble. They have asked the union when the pick­et is,” she said.

How­ev­er, she said the union is first con­sult­ing its mem­ber­ship be­fore de­cid­ing on any next steps.

“We need to talk to the mem­ber­ship, let them know what was dis­closed and what was not agreed on. Af­ter that we will ad­vance ac­tion,” Ogeer said.

She added that the union re­mains pre­pared to con­tin­ue ne­go­ti­a­tions but in­sists that trans­paren­cy and fair­ness must guide the process.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter El­der yes­ter­day but he said he had no com­ment on the is­sue at this time.

Com­pa­ny RE­SPONDS

TSTT yes­ter­day de­fend­ed its ex­ec­u­tive re­treat in To­ba­go.

In a re­lease, the com­pa­ny said no pay­ments had been made at the time of the in­quiry, and its clar­i­fi­ca­tion was not ful­ly re­flect­ed in the pub­lished ar­ti­cle. Fol­low­ing an in­ter­nal re­view, the com­pa­ny con­firmed the cit­ed amounts were “over­stat­ed by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 per cent” and did not rep­re­sent the ac­tu­al cost.TSTT did not give a break­down of the ex­pens­es though.

How­ev­er, the Sun­day Guardian sto­ry not­ed that TSTT has been in­voiced $436,081 for the three-day re­treat; not that it has paid that amount.

The com­pa­ny said the re­treat was pur­pose-dri­ven, not­ing it in­clud­ed “strate­gic plan­ning ses­sions, lead­er­ship align­ment and op­er­a­tional dis­cus­sions, meet­ings with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), and brand ex­e­cu­tion and en­gage­ment ac­tiv­i­ties in­volv­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic.”

It said it chose To­ba­go in­stead of pre­vi­ous over­seas lo­ca­tions such as New York or Lon­don to man­age costs and re­duce for­eign ex­change ex­pen­di­ture, adding the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment “self-fa­cil­i­tat­ed the pro­gramme lo­cal­ly, elim­i­nat­ing the need for ex­ter­nal con­sul­tants and sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing the over­all cost typ­i­cal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with such ex­er­cis­es.”

TSTT al­so said it has re­ferred the mat­ter to its at­tor­neys.