CWU wants to meet with PM on TSTT, Hilton

Akash Sama­roo

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) wants to dis­cuss the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of TSTT, the op­er­a­tions of AM­PLIA and the fu­ture of the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said the union was pre­pared to meet with the Prime Min­is­ter, pro­vid­ed the en­gage­ment was mean­ing­ful, frank and based on mu­tu­al re­spect.

“The PM has said let’s talk, and once this is gen­uine we will re­it­er­ate, we were al­ways will­ing to have mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions,” Ogeer told Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day.

She said the union had pre­vi­ous­ly re­quest­ed a meet­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who ac­knowl­edged its cor­re­spon­dence but had not agreed to meet.

“As it stands right at this mo­ment, should the PM ac­qui­esce, we’re avail­able to meet,” she said.

Ogeer iden­ti­fied TSTT’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly AM­PLIA’s op­er­a­tions, as a ma­jor con­cern. She al­so ques­tioned whether an in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port­ed­ly con­nect­ed to the com­pa­ny had be­gun.

“CWU looks for­ward to meet­ing with her as we are grave­ly con­cerned about TSTT, its sus­tain­abil­i­ty es­pe­cial­ly with AM­PLIA op­er­a­tions and the men­tion of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion which we’re not sure com­menced,” she said.

She al­so raised con­cerns about the pro­posed sale of the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, ques­tion­ing why a prof­itable com­pa­ny would be sold.

“Al­so on the heels of TSTT is Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, if a com­pa­ny is prof­itable then why sell?”

Ogeer said any dis­cus­sions must al­low both sides to ad­dress their con­cerns open­ly.

“Di­a­logue is healthy but it must come with some mod­icum of open­ness and frank forth­right en­gage­ment by par­ties with mu­tu­al re­spect.”

Her com­ments fol­lowed Fri­day’s labour march, which she de­fend­ed as a good start de­spite sug­ges­tions that the demon­stra­tion had failed.

Ogeer said the march was well at­tend­ed, al­though she ac­knowl­edged that par­tic­i­pa­tion could have been greater. She cit­ed two post­pone­ments and To­ba­go Car­ni­val among the fac­tors that af­fect­ed at­ten­dance.

Labour lead­ers have not yet con­duct­ed a post-mortem but are ex­pect­ed to meet to as­sess the march and iden­ti­fy ar­eas for im­prove­ment.

Ogeer al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s par­tic­i­pa­tion had un­der­mined the unions’ mes­sage, in­sist­ing the par­ty had not been in­vit­ed.

“Let me be pel­lu­cid­ly clear, the unions did NOT IN­VITE the PNM to par­tic­i­pate in the march as sup­port­ers or any oth­er rea­son. They came there of their own free will,” she said.

She main­tained that the Op­po­si­tion’s pres­ence did not de­tract from labour’s cause, adding that the unions re­mained fo­cused on work­ers’ is­sues.

Speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly for the CWU, Ogeer said she in­ter­vened when mem­bers of oth­er groups at­tempt­ed to join or po­si­tion them­selves ahead of the union’s con­tin­gent.

“I was clear that there will not be any po­lit­i­cal hi­jack­ing or PR stunt,” she said.

“If they were there as cit­i­zens they had to fall back ‘lit­er­al­ly to the back’.”

She added: “Labour led not PR and op­tics.”

Ogeer said the CWU would con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent its mem­bers un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly de­spite crit­i­cism.