Cabinet must consider THA’s workers’ complaints

The National Union of Government and Federated Workers (NUGFW) wants Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), Orville London, to make workers’ issues a part of his agenda in his dealings with Cabinet. So said NUGFW president-general Robert Giuseppi during a press briefing at the union’s Tobago offices on Friday last. Giuseppi told the Tobago media that this was the rationale behind the recent protest demonstration by union members in Scarborough; to get the THA Chief Secretary to ‘pressure’ the central government and by extension the CPO (Chief Personnel Officer) into speeding up negotiations. At the same time, however, he charged that despite London’s well meaning intentions he was “hamstrung” because he could not speak out, and at the same time was not getting the necessary support from his subordinates.
 
Giuseppi said, having had telephone discussions with London over the past week and a half, the media briefing was called to clear up certain issues over which the country was a “little confused” at present, and which would have been discussed at a meeting between himself and the THA chief Secretary  Friday  afternoon. He claimed that the NUGFW has been experiencing difficulties over the past two years with its collective agreement negotiations. He said the current collective agreement was implemented in January 2002 and will expire at the end of next year. Guiseppi claimed that the union submitted proposals six months before the start of the current negotiations. “Is two years now we have been negotiating with our chief employer, which is the central and local government; after examining and analysing all the issues surrounding the collective agreement negotiations, we thought it necessary to show solidarity, we thought it necessary that the members now join the collective bargaining process”, he said. “For almost two years it was just the negotiating team — the Tobago division, the southern division, the eastern division, the sections that operate in Trinidad, these were the representatives dealing with the collective bargaining.

“We were being interrupted for all different sorts of reasons, and we thought it necessary. It’s time that we leave the table for a while and bring the collective bargaining process on the road”, he explained. This started in Port-of-Spain, then moved to Tobago, and will later move to south Trinidad. He said when the “talk and talk across the table” seem to be slowing down and going backwards, “the collective force of our membership must take part and show that this union is in solidarity with each and every one of the positions the union has proposed to the CPO and to central and local government as an employer.” He stressed: “On the pension issue, reclassification issue, the regrading issue, the training issue, and the job and income security issue; four major pillars of our negotiations have been stifled, we have been frustrated, and we decided to take collective bargaining to the streets, and hence we were in Tobago.”