Trade unions threaten legal action over protest restrictions

A coali­tion of 11 trade unions is threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion against the Gov­ern­ment over new­ly im­posed State of Emer­gency (SOE) reg­u­la­tions that re­strict pub­lic demon­stra­tions at 15 des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing at a joint press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, TTUTA Pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe said the unions’ im­me­di­ate con­cern is what they de­scribe as sweep­ing lim­i­ta­tions on cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to protest.

“Our main fo­cus here to­day would be the 15 iden­ti­fi­able lo­ca­tions that we are pro­hib­it­ed from protest­ing, and that is why we’re here,” Ashe said.

No­tably ab­sent from the press con­fer­ence was OW­TU Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, who al­so serves as leader of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), one of the coun­try’s most in­flu­en­tial labour um­brel­la groups. How­ev­er, union rep­re­sen­ta­tives made it clear that his ab­sence should not be in­ter­pret­ed as a sign of di­vi­sion with­in the labour move­ment.

They stressed that the me­dia brief­ing was not con­vened un­der the ban­ner of JTUM but rather by a coali­tion of 11 in­di­vid­ual trade unions unit­ed in their op­po­si­tion to the protest re­stric­tions con­tained in the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions. The unions main­tained that there re­mains broad con­sen­sus across the labour move­ment on the need to pro­tect work­ers’ rights and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic free­doms.

While de­clin­ing to com­ment on oth­er as­pects of the reg­u­la­tions, Ashe said the coali­tion had not yet dis­cussed those mat­ters and was con­cen­trat­ing its ef­forts on the protest re­stric­tions.