United to protect public servants

Now in his forties, he has spent more than half of his life lobbying for the rights of public officers in Trinidad and Tobago through the Public Services Association (PSA). And while his more recent experiences in the trade union movement can be described as bitter-sweet - given his bitter, highly-publicised confrontations with the incumbent PSA leader Watson Duke - Saunders’ dream of a having a well-oiled, integrity- driven association has never wavered.

If anything, the flame with which he entered the PSA back in the early 1990s, burns even brighter.

On March 12, Saunders and a group calling themselves the United Protectors of the Public Service, held a news conference at City Hall, Port-of-Spain, signalling their intention to challenge the Duke-led Game Changers team, which is hoping for another four-year term following the PSA election, scheduled for November.

Essentially, the group is a coalition of some of the members who were opposed to Duke’s leadership ahead of the 2013 PSA election.

It’s symbol is an open star.

And although it may be early days yet with United Protectors being the first off the blocks in offering themselves as a worthy alternative, Saunders told Sunday Newsday the team was not leaving anything to chance.

“We needed to contest the leadership after the groundswell of disappointment in the national community, in the first instance and the public officers, which members of the PSA expressed after seeing several teams lose at the last 2013 PSA election. There was a cry following that for us to come together,” he said of the factors which influenced the establishment of United Protectors.

Saunders described as “chaotic at best,” Duke’s eight-year reign in the PSA.

“I think Mr Duke’s leadership is an abject failure,” he said. “It is almost as going to see a movie that would have gotten unlimited advertisement and when you sit in the theatre you are disappointed.

You walk out of the theatre because the film has bad actors.

This has happened over eight years.

“It has been controversy after controversy and his character has really become the face of the union, which, to me, is more disappointing because people perceive the union based on its leader, unfortunately, because he has sold himself as being bigger than our union.” Regarding the view in some quarters that Duke still had considerable support among the union’s membership, Saunders said: “I would not say that Mr Duke has a lot of support. I think that is a misconception.” He argued that such sentiments were a matter of opinion.

“There is a lot of crime in Trinidad and Tobago but does that represent the entire Trinidad and Tobago being full of crime. Mr Duke is someone who has some support. However, it is in the minority, similar to the position he now holds in Tobago (Minority Leader in the Tobago House of Assembly). He is a minority leader and that is what I see him as.” A former PSA general secretary, Saunders was part of the dynamic Duke-led Pioneers slate which defeated the Reformers in the union’s 2009 election. However, he claimed that within one month of the landslide victory, Duke began exhibiting “certain behaviours and mannerisms” which flew in the face of the PSA’s constitution. This resulted in Saunders and several other executive members being suspended.

Duke’s high-handed behaviour, Saunders said, continues unrestrained.

“What we had spoken to the members of the PSA about in 2009 and promised them, very early I was able to recognise that it was just a facade for some persons.

It was a misrepresentation.

It was a farce that was pulled on myself and the members of the PSA.” An enrolled nursing assistant at St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital, Saunders has enjoyed a long history in service and activism.

“I am actually a second-generation public officer,” he said. “My mother served the government and public of Trinidad and Tobago for over 40 years and my father was a religious minister for over 40 years,” he said. “I came from a home of service and putting others even before myself. My leadership will be reflective of the home that I came from, which is a far contrast to what obtains as the leadership of the public service at present.” Saunders added: “I see myself as being the experiences of all those persons, my teachers, church, union, these are the influences who would have guided me to be the individual that I am.

This (bid for PSA presidency) is just a natural evolution of the man they once knew. It will come as no surprise even to the incumbent.” Talking, it turned out, has always been his strong suit.

The Cowen Hamilton Secondary alumnus, who entered the public service in 1992, recalled that in December that same year, he was asked to talk at a function on behalf of his batch of nurses.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, that has stuck with me,” Saunders joked. “No matter how many times I have tried to stay quiet, my batch mates have always asked me to speak on their behalf and that later evolved by other categories of staff seeing a potential that they recognised something that was different about my mannerisms.

They always have asked me to speak on behalf of them.” As a PSA leader-in-waiting, Saunders said one of the main items on United Protectors’ agenda will be to restore trust and integrity to the union.

“We see our role as being even bigger than the PSA. We are partners to the governance of the country. So, we are going to restore that prominence to the PSA which it once had and we are going to restore the prominent role the public officer ought to be occupying in the national society.” Saunders said there also will be aggressive moves to rebrand the PSA and rebuild its structures.

The union’s regional units will be re-established, he said, “so that persons, no matter where they work, must not feel the need to journey to Port-of-Spain to be seen by an officer and when they reach there is no officer present.” “We are going to rebuild the regions and develop something called a regional council so that persons in Arima, San Fernando, and as far as Cedros, Pt Fortin, Tobago, they will be empowered through the regional committees,” he added.

“They will have an executive officer there with them and they will have their own team of industrial relations specialists assigned to them so that they will be able to get redress and there will be greater coordination and collaboration between management and the union.” Saunders said although United Protectors is hoping for an outright win, its focus also will be on restoring pride in the public service.

“My aim is for us to enter the PSA and in working with the Government have the average man in the street come into the public service and leave recommending it,” Saunders said.

He envisions a scenario in which citizens can get a driver’s permit in half an hour’s time and where people can visit the immigration department and leave within an hour.

“That is my dream but it cannot be done without the PSA working as a partner with the Government.” He argued that the relationship between the Government and the PSA cannot be an adversarial one.

“Even though differences will come up from time to time, the Government must always be comforted to speak through the CPO (Chief Personnel Officer) to the PSA. The Government must create an environment for public officers to perform at an optimum so that people will benefit.” Saunders said his leadership style will be all-embracing.

“I have always been a democratic type of person,” he said.

“It is reflective in my rise through the ranks of the PSA - from an ordinary member to the chairman of a section, to a grievance officer, to the position of general secretary and then being thrown out of the union as member but yet being able to approach the courts and it later ruling in my favour to have me reinstated.” “There would have been various issues over the past eight years and you would have seen our consistency. It was not just about talk. It would have been walking that talk over the years.

So, I have never given