PM urges unions to set aside ‘hatred’ as Annisette defends march

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is en­cour­ag­ing unions to set aside their “ha­tred” and put their mem­bers first by seek­ing di­a­logue with the Gov­ern­ment.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, a day af­ter sev­er­al trade unions staged a march in Port-of-Spain, the Prime Min­is­ter dou­bled down on her as­sess­ment of the march, say­ing, “Fol­low­ing the spec­tac­u­lar­ly failed protest yes­ter­day, which at­tract­ed at its peak about 400 peo­ple dri­ven by po­lit­i­cal and racial ha­tred of the UNC, the gov­ern­ment en­cour­ages those unions to set aside their ha­tred and put their mem­bers first.”

“The pop­u­la­tion has re­ject­ed their di­vi­sive rhetoric and there­fore I call on them to put aside their per­son­al in­ter­ests, bias, and ha­tred and work with the gov­ern­ment as oth­er unions are do­ing to set­tle ne­go­ti­a­tions in a re­spon­si­ble man­ner,” she added.

She not­ed that her Gov­ern­ment had re­cent­ly set­tled pro­tract­ed wage ne­go­ti­a­tions for Pow­er­Gen work­ers. 

“Yes­ter­day, while a small group of mis­guid­ed peo­ple and a hun­dred thou­sand ghosts were march­ing against the UNC, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties made an an­nounce­ment in the Par­lia­ment of a $66.1 mil­lion set­tle­ment with the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU),” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. 

How­ev­er, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette has dis­missed crit­i­cism over a per­ceived low turnout at a labour move­ment ral­ly in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day. 

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, An­nisette, who al­so serves as gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), hailed the event as a suc­cess de­spite ad­mit­ting that it at­tract­ed few­er par­tic­i­pants than sim­i­lar ac­tion in the past. 

An­nisette said: “Maybe they were ex­pect­ing 10,000 or 15,000. No, we did not have that. I will read­i­ly ad­mit it. But in the cir­cum­stances, one has to be sat­is­fied with the march that came out.”

The vet­er­an trade union­ist claimed that the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants in the protest is not the on­ly met­ric that can be used to mea­sure its suc­cess. 

“It’s not about num­bers. It’s about com­mit­ment. It’s about peo­ple who are will­ing to come out and act,” An­nisette said. 

Stat­ing that the march at­tract­ed thou­sands, in­clud­ing many who sup­port­ed from van­tage points along the route, An­nisette claimed that de­trac­tors sought to utilise area still pho­tographs of seg­ments of the march in or­der to claim that on­ly hun­dreds par­tic­i­pat­ed. 

“They nev­er showed the to­tal march, the length of the march and the peo­ple that were in­volved from all the dif­fer­ent unions,” he said. 

An­nisette al­so re­ject­ed crit­i­cism from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who ques­tioned the tim­ing of the march while claim­ing that sim­i­lar ac­tion was not tak­en by the trade union move­ment un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion be­tween 2015 and 2025. 

He not­ed that NATUC held a ma­jor march in 2022. 

An­nisette al­so chal­lenged claims that the trade unions politi­cised the march by al­low­ing PNM par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and of­fi­cials to par­tic­i­pate. 

He said that trade unions must en­gage politi­cians, as laws and poli­cies that af­fect cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing their mem­bers, are shaped by them (politi­cians). 

“It is not about pol­i­tics. It is about the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties and the so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues that work­ers have to face day to day,” he added. 

He not­ed that trade unions al­so have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to raise so­cio-eco­nom­ic con­cerns af­fect­ing cit­i­zens and are not con­fined to ne­go­ti­at­ing over their mem­bers’ terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment. 

“We rep­re­sent the voice­less, the dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties, the sin­gle par­ents and their chil­dren, who may not get three square meals a day be­cause of the salaries of their moth­er or fa­ther,” An­nisette said. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said that the per­ceived low turnout might be due to the politi­ci­sa­tion of the event.  

“What start­ed off prob­a­bly as a good think­ing union protest was al­lowed to gen­er­ate in­to a po­lit­i­cal march. I think that will give the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) some de­gree of com­fort to say that this was not strict­ly a trade union protest against them, but rather it was a po­lit­i­cal protest,” Ra­goonath said. 

He claimed that the lack of de­mar­ca­tion over the true in­tent of the event may have led to some trade unions and their mem­bers stay­ing away to avoid march­ing along­side for­mer gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who they protest­ed against in the past.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said that he did not close­ly fol­low the ral­ly. 

James al­so ques­tioned the per­ceived low par­tic­i­pa­tion of PNM mem­bers de­spite the at­ten­dance of se­nior par­ty of­fi­cials. 

“The Op­po­si­tion sup­port did not seem to be some­thing the PNM could gloat about,” James said.