PRESSURE MOUNTS ON BARRY

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Weeks be­fore the Gov­ern­ment presents its sec­ond bud­get, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer says her union will not back down on its 10 per cent wage hike re­quest. Fur­ther­more, Ogeer is now call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to meet with the union to set­tle out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, say­ing she will not deal with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath.

Speak­ing to the me­dia out­side TSTT House on Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain, dur­ing a mid­day protest yes­ter­day, Ogeer said she wants to by­pass Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath and speak di­rect­ly with the Prime Min­is­ter.

“I did say at the press con­fer­ence that I called out to the Prime Min­is­ter and Madam Prime Min­is­ter, I don’t know if you’re not look­ing, but I’m ask­ing you: I am will­ing to meet with you. Even Ste­vie Won­der and Ray Charles could see that what we have are facts. So, those who have ears will hear, and those who have eyes will see.”

At the end of the protest, she not­ed that she pre­ferred a con­ver­sa­tion with the PM over Padarath.

“I don’t want to speak with him. I’m go­ing over his head,” she said.

Ogeer is again call­ing on TSTT to set­tle wage ne­go­ti­a­tions for the pe­ri­ods 2020-2022 and 2022-2025 through a com­bined 10 per cent in­crease, which she again claimed had al­ready been agreed up­on.

“Again, the 10 per cent did not ap­pear in a vac­u­um. Those num­bers were crunched, and I want to say this and be very pel­lu­cid in my ut­ter­ances. We met with the oust­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Mr Keino Cox, and one of his fi­nan­cial ad­vis­ers, an em­ploy­ee at TSTT, right here, and we crunched the num­bers. As a mat­ter of fact, we re­ceived five pro­pos­als and re­ject­ed four, ac­cept­ing one. That one was able to set­tle a 10 per cent in­crease over two three-year pe­ri­ods.”

This ac­count, how­ev­er, has been re­ject­ed by Padarath, who is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Ogeer call­ing on her to pub­licly apol­o­gise for state­ments she made at a me­dia con­fer­ence. The let­ter was sent last week fol­low­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the union’s Hen­ry Street head of­fice and gave Ogeer 14 days from re­ceipt to re­spond.

Ogeer, how­ev­er, dis­missed the le­gal threat yes­ter­day, warn­ing that she would not be side­tracked.

“We are say­ing to­day that it is not about the dis­trac­tion and the noise sur­round­ing who re­ceived pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters or any at­tempt to muz­zle the union, be­cause they will not be able to muz­zle this union. We act in the best in­ter­ests of our mem­bers, and we re­main res­olute and con­vict­ed in all our ut­ter­ances be­cause we do not speak in a vac­u­um.”

She added, “To­day is not about any pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters, and be­fore you ask, let me just say yes, I re­ceived two, one from the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary and an­oth­er from Min­is­ter Padarath. But that’s a dis­trac­tion right now. The law will take care of that, and we have a bat­tery of at­tor­neys deal­ing with it. To­day is all about what work­ers de­serve.”

She fur­ther cau­tioned Padarath against what she de­scribed as “step­ping in­to the gayelle” to fight the union. In­stead, she urged him to fo­cus his at­ten­tion on TSTT and the al­leged cor­rup­tion with­in the com­pa­ny, rather than try­ing to “muz­zle the union.”

Guardian Me­dia called and sent a What­sApp mes­sage to Padarath, but up to press time there had been no re­sponse.

Ogeer called on TSTT to dis­close how it achieved its high­est prof­it in 17 years and what role work­ers played in gen­er­at­ing that re­sult. She said work­ers ought to be com­pen­sat­ed for the ef­forts they made to im­prove the com­pa­ny’s prof­itabil­i­ty.

Now that the State of Emer­gency has end­ed and the ban on pub­lic protests has been lift­ed, Ogeer vowed to con­tin­ue protest­ing in pur­suit of what she de­scribed as work­ers’ right­ful dues.

She said TSTT had of­fered three dates, be­gin­ning on Oc­to­ber 27, to re­sume wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“If we can­not re­turn to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble, then we’ll have to do what is nec­es­sary, which is to act in a man­ner that is law­ful and right. Then we may have to pro­ceed to an­oth­er av­enue, still well with­in the am­bit of the law.”
Asked about the rel­a­tive­ly small turnout of about two dozen peo­ple, Ogeer said, “Af­ter suf­fer­ing a mas­sive re­struc­tur­ing in 2022, we have a lot of re­mote work, so many work­ers are now work­ing from home and have been scat­tered across the or­gan­i­sa­tion. In the past, be­fore 2018, you would have seen hun­dreds of peo­ple here. You can’t see that any­more be­cause many of them are work­ing from home and, again, there is a fear fac­tor.”

Ogeer al­so claimed the com­pa­ny had threat­ened work­ers over par­tic­i­pat­ing in the protest, a claim that Guardian Me­dia was un­able to in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy.

How­ev­er, the CWU re­ceived sup­port from Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe, Avi­a­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Al­lied Work­ers’ Union pres­i­dent Nwan­nia Sorzano and Steel Work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley and en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Wayne Kublals­ingh.