Other unions seek Govt engagement following PSA’s wage hike

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Hours af­ter the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) suc­cess­ful­ly signed off on a 10 per cent wage hike for pub­lic ser­vants, sev­er­al labour move­ments urged the Gov­ern­ment to hold sim­i­lar con­sul­ta­tions with them.

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette said while he was hap­py the PSA re­ceived their 10 per cent wage in­crease af­ter ne­go­ti­a­tions with CPO Daryl Din­di­al, he hoped the Gov­ern­ment will not for­get oth­er trade unions.

He re­mind­ed Gov­ern­ment to do their part to meet and en­gage with work­ers in “good faith” to ad­dress their is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to mat­ters of ap­pro­pri­ate re­mu­ner­a­tion.

“We an­tic­i­pate that all en­ti­ties where the Gov­ern­ment has re­mit over... that those ne­go­ti­a­tions will be set­tled. It is the on­ly fair thing to do and it will be done as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to end the suf­fer­ing, and the at­tempt­ed pau­peri­sa­tion of gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees by the past regime.”

An­nisette not­ed that even as he hoped for more di­a­logue be­tween the trade unions and the Gov­ern­ment, he was pleased with the out­come for the PSA.

“This Gov­ern­ment, with­in their means, they were de­ter­mined to ad­dress the is­sue. Some may be un­hap­py, some may be hap­py, but the is­sue to me is that work­ers got their in­crease and that is what we must look at.”

He al­so urged the trade unions them­selves to work with Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate-sec­tor in­sti­tu­tions to cre­ate more op­por­tu­ni­ties for all stake­hold­ers.

Mean­while, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevin Ashe al­so urged Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress de­layed back­pay pay­ments to teach­ers fol­low­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions ear­li­er this year.

“We would want to say ours (pay in­crease) would have been fi­nalised since April and mem­bers are wait­ing for their monies,” Ashe said.

“So we’re just won­der­ing how far along has our process got­ten and how close are we to re­ceiv­ing our new salaries... so we’re wait­ing on our new salaries still and wait­ing for our back­pay for that pe­ri­od.”

Ashe said TTUTA has writ­ten to the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion and was ex­pect­ed to meet with the CPO, and was hope­ful that they could pro­vide an up­date on what was owed to them.

Ashe said the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion for many teach­ers was “dire” and stressed that teach­ers and sup­port staff were in ur­gent need of the mon­ey owed to them.

Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union pres­i­dent Michael Pren­tice was al­so con­tact­ed on the is­sue but de­clined com­ment.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union de­mand­ed clar­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty from Gov­ern­ment on ne­go­ti­a­tions, not­ing that they signed col­lec­tive agree­ments in April. The pe­ri­ods cov­ered by this pe­ri­od were from 2014 to 2016 and 2017 to 2019.

“At the sign­ing, the CPO as­sured us that new wage rates would be im­ple­ment­ed by Au­gust 2019 and ar­rears would be paid be­fore Christ­mas 2025. De­spite these as­sur­ances, Au­gust passed with­out ac­tion. When con­tact­ed, the CPO in­formed us that the mat­ter had been re­ferred to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance un­der the new ad­min­is­tra­tion. In Sep­tem­ber, we were told to await the na­tion­al bud­get.”

The union said the de­lays were un­ac­cept­able and called for an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to their con­cerns.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, for­mer Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert de­clined to com­ment, not­ing that he had “ad­dressed the mat­ter pre­vi­ous­ly.” He sent the on­line links to sto­ries pub­lished on the is­sue where he com­ment­ed.

Guardian Me­dia al­so at­tempt­ed to reach Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time. - Shane Su­perville