CWU questions Hilton job security as workers get severance calculations

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer is call­ing on Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein to keep his promise that Hilton work­ers’ jobs are safe.

Her call comes as more than 250 Hilton Trinidad work­ers await an­swers about their fu­ture, with the ho­tel’s lease set to ex­pire on Sep­tem­ber 18.

Speak­ing at a CWU me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ogeer said work­ers have re­ceived cal­cu­la­tions of their po­ten­tial sev­er­ance pack­ages, de­spite Ho­sein as­sur­ing them in June that their jobs were safe.

“We want to ask the line Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein, the promise that you made to Hilton work­ers, say­ing ‘fear not, don’t wor­ry, your job’s safe,’ is that promise go­ing to be kept?”

She said the no­tices have added to the anx­i­ety among work­ers, who have been liv­ing with re­peat­ed ex­ten­sions to the ho­tel’s op­er­at­ing arrange­ments.

Ogeer said the union was con­cerned that Hilton man­age­ment was de­scrib­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Gov­ern­ment as “fruit­ful” while work­ers were si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly be­ing is­sued sev­er­ance cal­cu­la­tions.

She said the union wants clar­i­ty on what will hap­pen to work­ers af­ter Sep­tem­ber 18, in­clud­ing whether their jobs, years of ser­vice and ben­e­fits will be pro­tect­ed.

Ogeer al­so ques­tioned whether ex­ist­ing work­ers would be con­sid­ered for em­ploy­ment if an­oth­er op­er­a­tor takes over the ho­tel.

“If Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein has in­ti­mat­ed that their jobs are safe, is it that at the new soil-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny that they had in the South with the new, let me call it, fran­chise, will these work­ers be con­sid­ered for that phase of em­ploy­ment?”

Ogeer al­so chal­lenged the sug­ges­tion that State-owned Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTecK) would as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Hilton work­ers af­ter Sep­tem­ber 18.

She said there is no suc­ces­sor­ship clause in the col­lec­tive agree­ment that would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­fer work­ers to eTecK.

Her com­ments come af­ter Hilton gen­er­al man­ag­er Olivi­er Mau­maire wrote to the CWU warn­ing that Hilton would not con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing the ho­tel be­yond Sep­tem­ber 18 if a re­place­ment agree­ment with eTecK is not fi­nalised.

In the let­ter, Mau­maire said Hilton un­der­stood that eTecK would as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all team mem­bers and re­lat­ed em­ploy­ment oblig­a­tions af­ter the lease ex­pires.

How­ev­er, eTecK has said Hilton re­mains the em­ploy­er of the work­ers and that ne­go­ti­a­tions with the ho­tel re­main ac­tive.

The State com­pa­ny has al­so said no de­ci­sion has been tak­en by eTecK or the Gov­ern­ment to per­ma­nent­ly dis­con­tin­ue the op­er­a­tion of the Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.

Ogeer said the un­cer­tain­ty has been on­go­ing for years, with the CWU re­peat­ed­ly seek­ing an­swers about the ho­tel’s fu­ture and pro­posed ren­o­va­tions.

She al­so ques­tioned the where­abouts of mon­ey which the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion had said was al­lo­cat­ed for ren­o­va­tions at the ho­tel.

“Un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment, they said mon­ey was al­lo­cat­ed for this ren­o­va­tion. We want to ask the UNC Gov­ern­ment to­day, where is that mon­ey?”

Ogeer re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion that the union’s po­si­tion was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, point­ing out that both PNM and UNC sup­port­ers make up the ho­tel’s work­force.

She al­so crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s hands-off ap­proach to the Hilton is­sue, ask­ing whether Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was com­fort­able with more than 250 work­ers be­ing put on the bread­line.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar pre­vi­ous­ly told Guardian Me­dia that Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Ltd runs its op­er­a­tions as it sees fit and that she could not dic­tate its busi­ness de­ci­sions.

Ogeer ques­tioned why Gov­ern­ment had in­ter­vened in the Nestlé mat­ter but was re­luc­tant to be­come in­volved in the Hilton sit­u­a­tion.

Ogeer said the union had writ­ten to Ho­sein seek­ing a meet­ing but, as of yes­ter­day, had not re­ceived a re­sponse.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Min­is­ter Ho­sein on the is­sues raised by the union but did not get a re­sponse up to press time.