Duke to unions: Balance politics with duty to members

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

For­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke is urg­ing trade union lead­ers not to al­low po­lit­i­cal al­le­giances to over­shad­ow their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the work­ers they rep­re­sent.

De­scrib­ing him­self as the great­est trade union leader in Trinidad and To­ba­go in the 21st cen­tu­ry, the leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) said suc­cess in both pol­i­tics and trade union­ism re­quires bal­ance.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Duke said bal­anc­ing trade union and po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties was es­sen­tial.

“There must be bal­ance, of course. While I was a trade union­ist, I be­came a very crit­i­cal fig­ure in Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go, and I main­tained that bal­ance. My work as a trade union­ist was about the mem­bers. My work as a po­lit­i­cal leader was about the peo­ple,” he said.

Asked how dif­fi­cult it was to main­tain that bal­ance, giv­en the of­ten-con­tentious re­la­tion­ship be­tween unions and politi­cians, Duke said his record spoke for it­self.

“For me, it was easy. Work­ers would say I fought tooth and nail with any­body, whether it was the PNM or the UNC.”

He said sac­ri­fic­ing his free­dom in de­fence of work­ers’ rights was a price he was al­ways pre­pared to pay.

“Be­ing locked up was a nor­mal thing for me. My rights were my rights and the rights of my peo­ple. I brought that same de­ter­mi­na­tion in­to my po­lit­i­cal ca­reer.

“We swam, we walked miles and we stood our ground for the peo­ple, rais­ing con­scious­ness and bring­ing is­sues to the fore­front. We did it our way, loud­ly and colour­ful­ly, and peo­ple re­mem­bered. They vot­ed ac­cord­ing­ly.”

Trade union­ists have a long his­to­ry of tran­si­tion­ing in­to pol­i­tics. Among them was for­mer All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Trade Union pres­i­dent gen­er­al Bas­deo Pan­day, who be­came prime min­is­ter in 1995. Oth­ers in­clude for­mer Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Clyde El­der, now MP for La Brea, and for­mer Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) vice-pres­i­dent Ernesto Ke­sar, now MP for Point Fortin.

Cur­rent PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas cam­paigned for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in the last gen­er­al elec­tion and now serves on a State board. Her union is cur­rent­ly at odds with the Gov­ern­ment over the pay­ment of 10 per cent salary ar­rears.

Fol­low­ing the PDP’s vic­to­ry in the De­cem­ber 2021 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions, Duke was forced to re­sign as PSA pres­i­dent af­ter then Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum. Duke had pro­posed fore­go­ing his PSA salary while serv­ing as deputy chief sec­re­tary.

In 2019, Duke pub­licly de­clined then-Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­quest for unions to sup­port the UNC ahead of the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion. As PDP leader, he al­so re­ject­ed calls for small­er par­ties to align with the UNC.

Duke now ar­gues that union lead­ers who join es­tab­lished po­lit­i­cal par­ties of­ten be­come bound by the prin­ci­ples and po­si­tions of those or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“I cre­at­ed my own move­ment. I nev­er fol­lowed any­body else’s move­ment. I cre­at­ed the PDP. That is dif­fer­ent from join­ing a par­ty. When you join a par­ty, you have no choice but to sup­port it,” he said.

“I built my move­ment from the ground up with peo­ple who were not known as politi­cians and who had no pub­lic as­pi­ra­tions of lead­er­ship. We changed the po­lit­i­cal land­scape.”

The for­mer as­sem­bly­man went fur­ther, claim­ing that many of To­ba­go’s cur­rent po­lit­i­cal fig­ures owe their ca­reers, di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, to him.

“There is no one in To­ba­go pol­i­tics now who was there be­fore, none. Every sin­gle one of them came through me, ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly.”

Of­fer­ing ad­vice to trade union­ists con­sid­er­ing a move in­to pol­i­tics, Duke said they should think in­de­pen­dent­ly while re­main­ing loy­al to whichev­er po­lit­i­cal move­ment they choose to sup­port.

“That is what I want my trade union col­leagues to do. Think for your­selves and en­gage the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate. But if you are en­gag­ing them, sup­port them all the way. Do not en­gage them and then try to di­vide things. I do not like hyp­o­crit­i­cal move­ments. If peo­ple join some­thing, they should sup­port it.”

Asked whether he was sat­is­fied with the cur­rent di­rec­tion of the trade union move­ment, Duke de­clined to com­ment on oth­er lead­ers, but de­fend­ed his own lega­cy.

“They can­not erase my lega­cy in the move­ment. I chal­lenge any­one to match my record as a trade union­ist,” he said.

Now a con­sul­tant with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), Duke said the ne­go­ti­at­ing skills he de­vel­oped in the labour move­ment con­tin­ue to serve the coun­try.

“My ne­go­ti­at­ing abil­i­ties are still be­ing used to help build this na­tion,” he said.