CWU boss to TSTT ahead of key negotiations today

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

​​Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer yes­ter­day chal­lenged the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) to come with a prop­er of­fer to work­ers when both sides sit at the ne­go­ti­a­tion ta­ble for a piv­otal round of talks to­day.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ogeer dis­missed TSTT’s wage pro­pos­al: 0-0-0 with no con­sol­i­da­tion of the cost-of-liv­ing al­lowance (CO­LA)—as an in­sult to the work­ers who kept the na­tion’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture alive through the pan­dem­ic and two ma­jor re­struc­tur­ing cy­cles.

“Ze­ro-ze­ro-ze­ro is not an of­fer,” Ogeer said.

“An of­fer has to be any­thing mov­ing from ze­ro. What they placed on the ta­ble can­not be con­sid­ered an of­fer in any in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions set­ting.”

Her re­marks come in the wake of the CPO and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion sign­ing off on a 10 per cent deal last week.

Ogeer said the union met with the com­pa­ny twice in April and May 2025, but TSTT has con­tin­ued its “cus­tom­ary” tac­tic of plead­ing fi­nan­cial col­lapse.

“TSTT’s po­si­tion is al­ways doom and gloom, al­ways cash-flow prob­lems. Yet da­ta has be­come the new oil, and they made sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue from high­er da­ta us­age dur­ing COVID-19,” she said.

She ar­gued that the com­pa­ny can­not re­fute the prof­its gen­er­at­ed un­der for­mer CEO Kent We­st­on, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the surge in dig­i­tal de­mand.

De­spite the hard­line po­si­tion, the union says it re­mains com­mit­ted to con­struc­tive di­a­logue dur­ing the talks.

“We are not about noise. And I be­lieve the com­pa­ny, un­der Mr (Keino) Cox, is al­so not in­ter­est­ed in noise. We ex­pect prop­er bud­get ap­proval by next week Wednes­day to close these ne­go­ti­a­tions,” she said.

Ogeer said the CWU main­tains that TSTT has more than enough fis­cal space to meet work­er de­mands.

“They re­trenched over 1,000 work­ers be­tween 2018 and 2022 to cut per­son­nel costs. The bar­gain­ing unit is now about 250 work­ers,” she not­ed.

“Yet, they in­creased their ex­ec­u­tive cadre by around 11 po­si­tions. One ju­nior staff salary equals three ex­ec­u­tives—so where is the sav­ings?”

The CWU is now call­ing on TSTT to ex­plain what it de­scribes as con­tra­dic­to­ry spend­ing pat­terns, in­clud­ing: Over­seas trips for ex­ec­u­tives, board mem­bers, and their plus-ones, more than 50 con­sul­tants, the hir­ing of mul­ti­ple ex-Dig­i­cel ex­ec­u­tives and high-lev­el ex­pens­es de­spite the com­pa­ny’s claims of fi­nan­cial strain

“If they can ex­plain all that, then I too, like the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, beg to move,” Ogeer said. “Ac­cord­ing to the union, an 11% in­crease is fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble; there­fore, noth­ing less than 10% is ac­cept­able.

With ne­go­ti­a­tions re­sum­ing to­day, Ogeer said the union and its mem­bers are anx­ious to con­clude the mat­ter—but not at any price.

“We must ap­ply the cor­rect cost-of-liv­ing al­lowance for 2020–2022 and 2023–2025. And we will not set­tle for any­thing less than 10%, giv­en TSTT re­mains prof­itable,” she as­sert­ed.

“Un­til then, we wait. But we stand res­olute.”