(Trinidad Express) Trade union leaders, silenced over the last 104 days under the State of Emergency, are prepared to hit the ground running as early as the day after the SoE is lifted.
With the SoE due to be lifted on Monday, Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) president general Ancel Roget said “action” was being planned at the various workplaces with stalled negotiations.
“Bear in mind we are still in the middle of protracted negotiations,” Roget said in a telephone interview yesterday.
He was referring to negotiations at Petrotrin, PowerGen, Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission, Trinidad Cement Ltd, University of the West Indies and National Petroleum.
“If they are planning a debate to extend this State of Emergency on Monday, all the joint trade union leaders already agreed to attend Parliament. We want to be present for that debate and look at the Government members in their eyes,” he said.
But if there is no debate and the SoE is lifted as expected, Roget, the de facto leader of the joint trade union leaders, said by Friday, December 9, the union leaders and their members would hit the streets in “massive demonstration and protest action” over stalled negotiations.
“There will be a massive public demonstration, march, rally in Port of Spain. This will be the first of a number of public demonstrations to come,” he warned.
Roget said it did not surprise him that Trinidad and Tobago dropped 18 places in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index for 2011.
“We continue to make the point that all State enterprises are controlled by the Government appointed boards and those board level directors often descend into the daily running of the organisation, ” he said.
