NUGFW, SWWTU PURSUE LOW COST HOUSING DREAM

Two of the countries most powerful trade unions, the National Union of Government and Federated Workers (NUGFW) and the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Union (SWWTU) which first linked up some two decades ago in an attempt to provide low cost housing for their members are today seeking to help Government achieve its target of 10,000 new houses a year. And while NUGFW and SWWTU are not officially part of the State housing initiative nonetheless their plans for housing will assist Government in meeting the 10,000 annual housing figure it believes can realistically be met by both the public and private sectors.

But since all things are relative, the idea of what constitutes low cost housing in Trinidad and Tobago has changed somewhat since NUGFW and the SWWTU handed over the keys to 20 of their members in the mid-1980s for the first houses which the NUGFW Construction Company had built. At the time a two-bedroom house erected by the construction company, and with a floor area of 947 square feet, cost $135,000, while a three-bedroom unit with a floor area of 1,105 square feet had cost $145,000. Each had a carport, with the larger unit’s being 160 square feet. Admittedly, the normal profit margin which would have formed part of any housing construction at the time would have been trimmed to ensure the lowest possible selling price, and this without sacrificing quality.

It may be difficult for the two unions which together in the 1980s constructed several hundred houses in three phases, including 122 in the first phase and 151 in the second on land in Valsayn, to have their housing projects low cost this time around without Government support. For apart from modest profit margins, they were able in the 1980s to keep down the overall cost because Government absorbed the cost of infrastructure development. This included Government’s retention of ownership of roads, drains and open spaces, which included a recreational area and playing field. In turn, there was a direct subsidy through Government’s meeting the cost of a Home for the Aged, constructed and run by the unions. And when you consider that the Chairman of the National Housing Authority, Noel Garcia, was quoted in the December 20 issue of Newsday as stating that the average house today costs in excess of $500,000 then Government will have to once more absorb the cost of infrastructure development in the present housing project being undertaken by NUGFW and SWWTU and indeed any future housing projects.

Indeed, for Government to offer finished housing at the prices it is doing today, as it pushes to reach its planned level of 10,000 units a year, it has to absorb costs that a private housing developer would pass on normally to purchasers. It would be clearly uneconomic for the private housing developer to pursue this course, and should he attempt to do so would soon be bankrupt. The reality of the market place requires prices for unsubsidised housing to be set considerably above what Government is today asking for single dwelling places and/or apartments it, or rather the National Housing Authority, contracts out for construction.

Despite this it is good that the two trade unions are still continuing to pursue the low cost housing dream through the current project at Real Spring, Lenny Saith Drive, Valsayn to be undertaken by the NUGFW Construction Company. But for the selling price of units at this and/or any other housing project by the two unions to be kept down, as noted earlier, Government will need to subsidise it as it would its own projects. Both the SWWTU and the NUGFW are shareholders in the NUGFW Construction Company, with NUGFW having the majority shareholding. But the SWWTU, not unlike one of the forerunners of NUGFW — the Federated Workers Trade Union — had been forged out of the crucible of the June 17, 1937 Social Revolution led by the late Tubal Uriah Butler. Perhaps I should explain that the construction company was formed since the constitution of NUGFW, a merger of the Federated Workers Trade Union registered in 1937, and the National Union of Government Employees, registered much later, did not allow the union to be involved in private enterprise projects.

The idea for the housing project had come from Selwyn John, a former General Secretary of NUGFW, and later the union would invite the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Trade Union, to link up with it as a minority shareholder. Both the SWWTU and the FWTU (now NUGFW) had been committed both to the upliftment of their members, specifically, and the working class, generally, and their coming together to construct housing for their members would have not been regarded by trade unionists in particular as unusual. A Happy and Prosperous 2005 to all of my readers.