Unions consider nationwide strike

The UNC is promising the trade unions that they will have the full support of the Opposition should they decide to stage a nationwide strike.

Speaking with Newsday after a 2005/2006 Budget consultation between the Opposition and trade union representatives at UNC leader Basdeo Panday’s Port-of-Spain office yesterday, National Trade Union Centre (Natuc) second vice-president Rudranath Indarsingh said there was a "broad sense within all the unions" that Cabinet is making decisions about the restructuring of various industries and entities in TT, and those decisions are then "handed down" to the population. "In that regard, there seems to be not the political will from this Government for any form of effective social dialogue to take place among the stakeholders. That is a general concern of all the unions," Indarsingh said.

While stating that the trade unions which comprise Natuc have not made a decision on staging a nationwide strike, such action would not be taken without broad consensus from the movement.

Indarsingh said Natuc first considered this idea where Government failure to implement the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) is concerned, and the labour movement remains unhappy with the current state of affairs where OSHA is concerned. Labour Minister Danny Montano said he planned to complete a review of the legislation by the end of September, and Government was working to implement the Act within the shortest possible time.

Indarsingh said the labour movement remained unhappy with the series of fatal accidents that had taken place within recent times (most noticeably the Tradewind Sunrise tanker explosion in June.)

None of the findings into those incidents has been made public, and no one has been held accountable for them.

In expressing the Opposition’s solidarity with the proposed strike, Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Moonilal said the UNC was concerned about the way in which Government had allegedly not allowed labour to have a say in some of its major policy initiatives.