Trinidad: Female executive files complaint against ex-union boss for in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour

(Trinidad Guardian) The Bank­ing and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) has con­firmed it re­ceived a com­plaint of in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour against its for­mer pres­i­dent Vin­cent Cabr­era one month be­fore he was ap­point­ed In­dus­tri­al Court judge.

The com­plaint came from the lone fe­male mem­ber of a lo­cal group of trade union ex­ec­u­tives who trav­elled to Cu­ba for that coun­try’s May Day cel­e­bra­tions.

 
A week ago, BIG­WU first vice pres­i­dent Don De­venish con­firmed that he was aware of both the fe­male’s com­plaint and Cabr­era’s re­sponse. In re­sponse to emailed ques­tions, De­venish said he was aware the “in­ci­dent” took place in Cu­ba and that the woman spoke with him about the mat­ter.

De­venish and for­mer Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) head John Julien were both named in the let­ter.

Guardian Me­dia was first alert­ed to the is­sue back in Ju­ly and re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion from Julien then. He had said then that he was not aware of any such in­ci­dent be­tween Cabr­era and the woman.

How­ev­er, on Thurs­day, Julien con­firmed he was aware some­thing hap­pened “but I was not present dur­ing such things.”

“That is a mat­ter be­tween her­self and the union and what­ev­er ac­tion she wants to take af­ter that,” Julien said.

The fe­male ex­ec­u­tive wrote two let­ters of com­plaint—one on May 10 and the oth­er on May 17.

Ac­cord­ing to the May 10, 2019, let­ter, the on­ly one re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia, the woman is not seek­ing ret­ri­bu­tion or dam­ages but asked that Cabr­era apol­o­gise for his be­hav­iour and al­so re­frain from con­tact­ing her un­less it was work-re­lat­ed.

In the let­ter, the woman said the en­vi­ron­ment at the com­mu­nal house in Cu­ba was so un­com­fort­able she was made “to lock my­self in my room when­ev­er we were in the house be­cause I did not want to be around him. I al­so found it very dis­taste­ful as a pres­i­dent to be speak­ing ill of mem­bers of the Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive. I was sub­ject to var­i­ous un­war­rant­ed sex­ist com­ments and harsh tones.”

“Com­rade (John) Julien, who ac­com­pa­nied us on the trip, can at­test to the lev­el of dis­re­spect and lev­el of dis­com­fort I was feel­ing. As a fe­male, the on­ly fe­male on the trip, I was ex­treme­ly un­com­fort­able and very sad…I made my­self very clear and ex­pressed my dis­plea­sure with the com­rade’s dis­play but that did not stop him,” she said.

She said when the group re­turned to T&T, things got worse.

“Up­on my re­turn to Trinidad, the com­rade, maybe be­cause he knows what he did, at­tempt­ed to slan­der my name to my branch by telling them and oth­ers that I was un­pre­pared for the trip,” she said.

She said an­oth­er woman went through a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I even con­fid­ed in a fel­low com­rade who told me that these things are the norm in the union and she was, in fact, a vic­tim of some very un­pleas­ant ex­changes from the pres­i­dent and worse than what I was ex­posed to,” she said.