Trinidad: Retrenchment of around 200 at UTT underway

(Trinidad Guardian) Tears flowed and anx­i­ety in­creased among Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T staff yes­ter­day, as some col­lect­ed their re­trench­ment let­ters and oth­ers wait­ed for hours at cam­pus­es through­out the coun­try.

Sev­er­al de­part­ments, in­clud­ing the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices, Health and Safe­ty De­part­ment, Ex­am­i­na­tion De­part­ment and Le­gal were lit­er­al­ly shut down as staff, in­clud­ing se­nior man­agers, were sent home. Even the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Man­ag­er was sent home.

Staffers at UTT’s O’Meara, Port-of-Spain (John Don­ald­son), Ch­aguara­mas (Mar­itime) and Point Lisas cam­pus­es got their re­trench­ment let­ters from the uni­ver­si­ty’s Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment.

How­ev­er, staff mem­bers at the Corinth and San Fer­nan­do Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute were said to be wait­ing in anx­i­ety for the en­tire day but nev­er got their let­ters. At 4 pm they were all asked to leave the re­spec­tive com­pounds with no ex­pla­na­tion.

One south staff mem­ber de­scribed the act as an in­hu­mane.

“Peo­ple were in tears and hav­ing anx­i­ety at­tacks for the en­tire day … this is in­hu­mane, they suf­fer­ing us with this wait.”

An­oth­er who re­ceived his let­ter with tears in his eyes said he does not know what to do next.

“I was sent home. I just got my let­ter and have to take my time and dri­ve home be­cause I don’t know where my mind is right now. I have to look for an­oth­er job.”

A staff mem­ber from O’Meara who wished not to be iden­ti­fied said: “Is re­al pace in­side of there and it’s like a dead house.”

A stu­dent who al­so went to con­duct a trans­ac­tion de­scribed what he ob­served.

“Some­thing strange is hap­pen­ing there. I went to Ac­counts and Reg­is­tra­tion and they were closed, which is strange. I was not told of any­thing.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to gain ac­cess to the O’Meara cam­pus but was turned away by se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, one of whom said, “Me­dia is not wel­comed…you have to leave now.”

Be­tween 8 am and 11 am, Em­ploy­ment As­sis­tance Pro­gramme Ser­vices desks were set up at the cam­pus­es where coun­selling ser­vices were of­fered to re­trenched staffers, along with oth­er ser­vices such as out­place­ment ser­vices, fi­nan­cial plan­ning and well­ness ses­sions.

In some of the let­ters sent out, some of the re­trenched work­ers were asked to leave the premis­es im­me­di­ate­ly while oth­ers were giv­en a 45-day no­tice but still ad­vised that their pres­ence was no longer need­ed and that they had one week to pack up their per­son­al be­long­ings.

Guardian Me­dia was al­so re­li­ably told that even the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty staff is to be re­placed soon.

On Thurs­day, UTT pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor Sarim Al-Zubaidy in­formed staff mem­bers via a mem­o­ran­dum of yes­ter­day’s re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise. He said the uni­ver­si­ty is at the stage where heads of units are be­ing in­formed of their re­vised struc­tures and the mem­bers of staff to be sep­a­rat­ed.

“Let­ters have been sent to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union in­form­ing of the sta­tus of UTT’s re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise. Cor­re­spon­dence to the Min­istry of Labour and Small En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment will be dis­patched lat­er to­day (Thurs­day), ” Al-Zubaidy said in the memo.

“At this time, I would like to thank all mem­bers of staff for the pa­tience ex­hib­it­ed, and which you con­tin­ue to ex­hib­it, dur­ing this ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od. Once again, staff are urged to act re­spon­si­bly and al­low good sense to pre­vail. We thank you for your co­op­er­a­tion,” Al-Zubaidy added.

On Ju­ly 18, Pro­fes­sor Clement Im­bert (Emer­i­tus), act­ing chair­man and chair­man of the Hu­man Re­source and Ap­point­ments Sub-Com­mit­tee (HRASC) of the board, con­firmed the re­struc­tur­ing process but gave an as­sur­ance that 840 po­si­tions would be kept.

UTT’s re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise start­ed over two years ago and the man­age­ment has been en­gaged in on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) since the start of the process.

Im­bert con­firmed that the cur­rent re­struc­tur­ing will re­sult in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 non-aca­d­e­m­ic staff be­ing sep­a­rat­ed, in­clud­ing per­sons at the lev­el of man­ag­er or above.

Im­bert ex­plained that the uni­ver­si­ty had no choice to take this ac­tion be­cause of the pre­vail­ing eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion.

“Gov­ern­ment is the ma­jor source of rev­enue for UTT, via di­rect al­lo­ca­tions for its cap­i­tal and re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, and through the re­im­burse­ment of stu­dent fees un­der GATE; the pre­vail­ing eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion has not al­lowed Gov­ern­ment to main­tain the lev­el of an­nu­al sub­ven­tions pre­vi­ous­ly al­lo­cat­ed to the uni­ver­si­ty, “ Im­bert said.

“Those re­duc­tions ex­posed in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the op­er­a­tions of the uni­ver­si­ty – in­ef­fi­cien­cies which were al­ready be­ing re­viewed, both in re­spect of its aca­d­e­m­ic struc­ture and its non-aca­d­e­m­ic and sup­port staffing; Salaries and re­lat­ed ben­e­fits of UTT’s staff ac­count for over 70 per cent of the uni­ver­si­ty’s re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­tures.”

Im­ple­ment­ing the non-aca­d­e­m­ic re­struc­tur­ing al­lows UTT to re­duce its pay­roll by ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 mil­lion month­ly, bring­ing it fur­ther in line with the fi­nances re­quired giv­en the lev­el of the sub­ven­tions ap­proved by Gov­ern­ment.

The dis­tri­b­u­tion of let­ters is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue on Mon­day.