Trade unions postpone march to October 23

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The trade union move­ment has post­poned its planned mass demon­stra­tion through Port of Spain from Oc­to­ber 16 to Oc­to­ber 23, out of re­spect for the late ca­lyp­so icon Mighty Spar­row, whose state-as­sist­ed fu­ner­al is sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 16.

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette con­firmed the de­ci­sion on Fri­day, ex­plain­ing that while po­lice had con­tact­ed or­gan­is­ers about the sched­ul­ing con­flict, law en­force­ment had nei­ther in­struct­ed nor re­quest­ed that the unions post­pone the march.

In­stead, he said, the de­ci­sion was tak­en vol­un­tar­i­ly fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions among trade union lead­ers, who agreed that the labour move­ment should pay its re­spects to one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s great­est cul­tur­al icons.

“The 23rd is a con­firmed date,” An­nisette said, mak­ing it clear that the demon­stra­tion would pro­ceed one week lat­er.

The de­ci­sion has re­ceived the sup­port of sev­er­al unions, in­clud­ing the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU), Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA), Steel Work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SWUTT), Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU), All Trinidad Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Trade Union (AT­GW­TU), Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU), Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA), Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA), Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union (CAGTWU), and the AWU.

An­nisette said po­lice con­tact­ed the or­gan­is­ers af­ter it be­came ap­par­ent that Spar­row’s fu­ner­al arrange­ments would co­in­cide with the date for which the unions had ap­plied to stage their demon­stra­tion in the cap­i­tal.

He stressed, how­ev­er, that the po­lice had mere­ly brought the sched­ul­ing con­flict to their at­ten­tion.

“They nev­er called to ask us to post­pone it,” he said.

An­nisette ex­plained that the fu­ner­al would re­quire road clo­sures and the de­ploy­ment of State re­sources in ar­eas near the planned demon­stra­tion route. Rather than com­pete with those arrange­ments, union lead­ers felt it was ap­pro­pri­ate to choose an­oth­er date.

“We un­der­stand that as trade union­ists, we like the cul­ture be­cause the cul­ture is trade union too,” he said.

He added that there was con­sen­sus among the par­tic­i­pat­ing unions that the demon­stra­tion should not clash with Spar­row’s fi­nal farewell.

The march had been planned against a back­drop of grow­ing in­dus­tri­al ten­sions, in­clud­ing the on­go­ing wage dis­pute in­volv­ing work­ers at Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), which has at­tract­ed sup­port from sev­er­al unions across the labour move­ment.

The demon­stra­tion is ex­pect­ed to bring to­geth­er work­ers and trade union rep­re­sen­ta­tives in a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty over labour con­cerns.

The CWU, led by Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joanne Ogeer, has been de­mand­ing a 10 per cent wage in­crease for TSTT work­ers. How­ev­er, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has main­tained that no such of­fer was made and that the Gov­ern­ment would not be pres­sured in­to grant­i­ng the in­crease.

The dis­pute has al­so been ac­com­pa­nied by le­gal ten­sions, with Padarath’s at­tor­neys is­su­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Ogeer over pub­lic state­ments she made.

De­spite the post­pone­ment, An­nisette ac­knowl­edged that con­sid­er­able prepa­ra­tions had al­ready gone in­to the demon­stra­tion and that some mem­bers would be dis­ap­point­ed by the change.

“Be­cause there was a lot of or­gan­i­sa­tion and a lot of peo­ple go­ing to be dis­ap­point­ed, but you had to pay re­spect to the dead,” he said.

Asked whether he be­lieved the sched­ul­ing con­flict was de­lib­er­ate, An­nisette de­clined to spec­u­late.

“I don’t want to com­ment whether it was de­lib­er­ate or not,” he said.

Spar­row, whose re­al name was Dr Slinger Fran­cis­co, died in New York on Sep­tem­ber 27 at the age of 91. The Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly an­nounced that he would re­ceive a state-as­sist­ed fu­ner­al in recog­ni­tion of his con­tri­bu­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­ture and in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion.

An­nisette al­so ex­tend­ed con­do­lences on be­half of the labour move­ment to Spar­row’s chil­dren and wider fam­i­ly.

The unions are now ex­pect­ed to redi­rect their mo­bil­i­sa­tion ef­forts to­wards Oc­to­ber 23, with An­nisette urg­ing that the new date be wide­ly pub­li­cised to en­sure work­ers and sup­port­ers are in­formed of the change.