CWU secures 11% wage hike for Hilton workers

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

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The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) has se­cured an eleven per cent wage in­crease for work­ers at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, con­clud­ing two long-out­stand­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods dat­ing back to 2019 with the com­pa­ny.

CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer con­firmed the agree­ment fol­low­ing bi­lat­er­al talks with Hilton man­age­ment yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing the process as lengthy but ul­ti­mate­ly pro­duc­tive.

She said the pe­ri­od cov­ered June 2022-May 2025 and June 2019-May 2022.

Ogeer not­ed that ear­ly in the talks, Hilton ap­peared firm in its po­si­tion.

“At first, the com­pa­ny seemed to be play­ing hard­ball. Nonethe­less, the union has been very clear, and we have ar­tic­u­lat­ed the po­si­tion at best. The ho­tel, al­though be­ing un­der ren­o­va­tion, soon to be ren­o­vat­ed, I should say — they are poised for prof­itabil­i­ty. They have con­tin­ued to make prof­its and that has been shown on the books,” she said.

“We have re­mained stead­fast in all ar­tic­u­la­tions and to­day we have signed off on an 11% wage in­crease, and we signed off on both col­lec­tive agree­ments for the pe­ri­od,” she con­firmed.

The union al­so agreed to re­solve two long-stand­ing is­sues. How­ev­er, she stressed that one ma­jor con­cern is now be­ing pri­ori­tised: per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment at the ho­tel.

“The last per­son that was made per­ma­nent in Hilton was about 25 years ago. That is some­thing that the union will be clam­our­ing for in the very near fu­ture af­ter sign­ing off these col­lec­tive agree­ments,” she said, adding ne­go­ti­a­tions for the next pe­ri­od are ex­pect­ed to be­gin as ear­ly as next week.

Ogeer, how­ev­er, de­clined to dis­close when work­ers will re­ceive retroac­tive pay­ments.

“For safe­ty rea­sons, again, it will be very ir­re­spon­si­ble of us to dis­close when these work­ers would be en­ti­tled to retroac­tive pay­ments and we would pre­fer to keep that out of the pub­lic do­main at this point in time,” she not­ed.

With pub­lic sec­tor work­ers re­cent­ly re­ceiv­ing a ten per cent pack­age ne­go­ti­at­ed be­tween the Pub­lic Ser­vices’ As­so­ci­a­tion and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, Ogeer was asked whether the CWU’s eleven per cent now sets a new bar­gain­ing bench­mark.

She re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tion, say­ing, “Well, the com­pa­nies that we rep­re­sent, we have al­ways start­ed high be­cause that is what col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is about. We start high and we come down. Ten per cent is the pop­u­lar fig­ure on the ta­ble right now. To say it will start a set prece­dent, I wouldn’t like to say that” she said.

“The union and the ex­ec­u­tive will try our very best to en­sure and ne­go­ti­ate for what is the best for our work­ers.”

The CWU is now turn­ing its fo­cus to TSTT ne­go­ti­a­tions and Ogeer made her po­si­tion clear.

“Mean­ing TSTT, the last time we set­tled ne­go­ti­a­tions, we set­tled for five per cent over a six-year pe­ri­od. It is not any way un­fair, no, for us to even ask for nine per cent or 10 per cent,” she said.

She added that TSTT’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance jus­ti­fies a strong po­si­tion.

“As a mat­ter of fact, if the com­pa­ny is se­ri­ous, as they seem to be now, as we are hav­ing talks and gen­uine, I be­lieve that set­tling at nine per cent or 10 per cent is more than rea­son­able,” Ogeer said.

“So, I wouldn’t want to say that it’s stead­fast that I would want to stay at 10 per cent be­cause we have just set­tled at 11 per cent at Hilton. But TSTT is more prof­itable than the Hilton. TSTT is not a com­pa­ny that has been shout­ing or stat­ing that they have been mak­ing con­sid­er­able loss­es.”

She ref­er­enced as­sur­ances from TSTT’s act­ing CEO Keino Cox.

“I’ve heard from the new act­ing CEO, Mr Keino Cox, that there will be very good prof­it mar­gins, if I should say so, in the near fu­ture, as in the ear­ly fu­ture. So, I will be en­gag­ing the com­pa­ny. We are soon to re­sume ne­go­ti­a­tions, and we will not be set­tling for any­thing less than 10%.”