It seemed like a pos­i­tive, proac­tive move when Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al in­vit­ed 11 pub­lic sec­tor unions and as­so­ci­a­tions to a meet­ing this week to dis­cuss the cur­rent eco­nom­ic land­scape and the state’s fi­nan­cial sta­tus.

All but two ac­cept­ed the of­fer to take part in the vir­tu­al talks, which were in­tend­ed to set a pos­i­tive tone for the pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions due to take place in the com­ing months.

Looked at on its own, those talks seemed like a good idea. How­ev­er, viewed along­side oth­er de­vel­op­ments on the labour front over the past week — wor­ry­ing in­di­ca­tors of the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate in the coun­try — the out­look be­comes de­cid­ed­ly neg­a­tive.

In a sys­tem that re­quires col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing for the set­tle­ment of terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment, the large num­ber of ex­pired col­lec­tive agree­ments and drawn-out, con­tentious ne­go­ti­a­tions are symp­toms of an un­healthy sit­u­a­tion.

The threat of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion re­lat­ed to stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions looms large across sev­er­al sec­tors.

On Thurs­day, T&TEC work­ers staged protests at their work­places across the coun­try, de­mand­ing a set­tle­ment of salary ne­go­ti­a­tions and im­proved health and safe­ty prac­tices.

Al­though T&TEC is clas­si­fied as an es­sen­tial ser­vice and work­ers are pro­hib­it­ed un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA) from tak­ing strike ac­tion, there were omi­nous hints of work dis­rup­tions which could im­pact the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply.

An­oth­er is­sue of con­cern in­volved Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) pi­lots who re­cent­ly staged protests over out­stand­ing wages and in­cre­ments. So far, those protests have not dis­rupt­ed flights but there are fears in­dus­tri­al ac­tion might not be too far off.

The sit­u­a­tion was con­cern­ing enough for of­fi­cials from the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce to ap­peal to the pi­lots to hold off on any planned ac­tion dur­ing this week­end’s To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

The con­tentious is­sues in­clude job se­cu­ri­ty, in­ad­e­quate wages and de­layed ne­go­ti­a­tions, as the pi­lots have been work­ing un­der ex­pired con­tracts for the past nine years. They are not sat­is­fied with the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to their com­plaints.

Trou­ble is al­so brew­ing at the Port of Port-of-Spain, where there was in­dus­tri­al ac­tion ear­li­er this month over the slow pace of wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, among oth­er is­sues.

These de­vel­op­ments are all signs of the poor state of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions across T&T, at a time when stake­hold­ers should be fo­cus­ing on cre­at­ing sus­tain­able jobs, en­sur­ing job se­cu­ri­ty and achiev­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness vi­tal for eco­nom­ic progress.

It is bad enough that this coun­try is still yoked to the IRA, labour leg­is­la­tion in­tro­duced more than half a cen­tu­ry ago that has not kept pace with the evolv­ing eco­nom­ic and so­cial en­vi­ron­ment.

In­dus­tri­al ac­tion of any form will lead to dis­rup­tions, loss­es in pro­duc­tion and ad­verse eco­nom­ic con­se­quences for this coun­try, still re­cov­er­ing from an eco­nom­ic down­turn fol­lowed by COVID-19.

These might have been among the facts con­veyed to the unions that met with the CPO. How­ev­er, as well-mean­ing as that ges­ture might have been, it isn’t much help in the pre­vail­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions land­scape. The ab­sence of gen­uine tri­par­tite process­es is not con­ducive to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and growth.

The in­abil­i­ty to com­plete col­lec­tive agree­ments and set­tle dis­putes prompt­ly de­nies fair­ness and jus­tice to em­ploy­ees and em­ploy­ers alike.

What T&T needs is an up­grad­ed in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions sys­tem that sup­ports changes in the work en­vi­ron­ment and em­braces tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments. Get­ting to that stage re­quires a col­lab­o­ra­tive and co­op­er­a­tive ap­proach by busi­ness, labour and gov­ern­ment.