DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Lack­ram Bo­doe is avoid­ing di­rect an­swers on whether some re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty (RHA) work­ers, now protest­ing their ex­clu­sion from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion’s (PSA) ten per cent wage in­crease deal, will re­ceive back­pay be­fore Christ­mas.

At the same time, the PSA’s lead­er­ship has re­mained silent, deep­en­ing un­cer­tain­ty among af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that for back­pay to be processed this month, in­struc­tions would have had to be is­sued by the close of busi­ness yes­ter­day, with pay­roll de­part­ments across the RHAs hav­ing al­ready fi­nalised De­cem­ber salaries.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day via What­sApp mes­sage for an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion, Min­is­ter Bo­doe said the min­istry re­spects work­ers’ con­cerns and re­mains com­mit­ted to a fair and sus­tain­able out­come, but he did not di­rect­ly an­swer on whether ne­go­ti­a­tions have be­gun.

Asked whether he had met with the PSA to dis­cuss ad­di­tion­al back­pay for health­care work­ers, he said: “As out­lined by the Min­istry of Fi­nance, wage ne­go­ti­a­tions for RHA em­ploy­ees must take place be­tween each re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty and its recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union, in keep­ing with the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act. The Min­istry of Health re­spects the right of health­care work­ers to voice their con­cerns. The Min­istry of Health re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing close­ly with the RHAs and the Min­istry of Fi­nance to sup­port a fair and sus­tain­able out­come.”

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to RHAs, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the East­ern and South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties de­ferred ques­tions to Bo­doe’s of­fice, which did not re­spond.

The PSA’s last pub­lic up­date came last Wednes­day, when pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas said she had writ­ten to RHA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers seek­ing an ad­vance on ar­rears to be paid on or be­fore De­cem­ber 23. Since then, no fur­ther state­ment has been is­sued, and re­peat­ed at­tempts to reach her have gone unan­swered. PSA vice pres­i­dent Avinash Ma­haraj al­so de­clined to com­ment, re­fer­ring queries back to Thomas.

But Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has said that, based on dis­cus­sions with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, no arrange­ments had been made for back­pay for any union aside from the PSA for this month.

“As far as I am aware, based on con­ver­sa­tions with CPO, no arrange­ments were made for back­pay for any union oth­er than the PSA for the De­cem­ber pe­ri­od,” Tan­coo said out­side par­lia­ment on De­cem­ber 5.

Tan­coo added that new salary arrange­ments are ex­pect­ed to be rat­i­fied for oth­er unions, with pay­ments like­ly to start in the first quar­ter of next year.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue, how­ev­er, for­mer PSA pres­i­dent Clyde Weath­er­head yes­ter­day said RHA em­ploy­ees were giv­en un­re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tions, warn­ing that the PSA does not have the le­gal stand­ing to ne­go­ti­ate bind­ing wage agree­ments on their be­half.

Weath­er­head ex­plained that un­der the law es­tab­lish­ing the RHAs, em­ploy­ees hired di­rect­ly by those au­thor­i­ties are no longer civ­il ser­vants and fall un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act. On­ly recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty unions can ne­go­ti­ate bind­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments with RHAs, he added.

“In the RHAs, PSA has nev­er ap­plied for a recog­ni­tion cer­tifi­cate. So, at this point in time, that lit­tle arrange­ment that took place for the last cou­ple of ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods, up to 2013, was not an arrange­ment that would have stood le­gal scruti­ny. So, the PSA can­not ne­go­ti­ate for peo­ple in the RHAs at this point in time,” Weath­er­head ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Weath­er­head, a Privy Coun­cil rul­ing in the case of the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (ap­pel­lant) vs PSA (re­spon­dent) in Sep­tem­ber con­firmed that when pub­lic of­fi­cers trans­fer to new statu­to­ry bod­ies, their union rep­re­sen­ta­tion does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­fer.

In the case of RHAs, he said recog­nised unions cur­rent­ly in­clude the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) for dai­ly-paid work­ers, the Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­als As­so­ci­a­tion for doc­tors in the South West, and the Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion in the East­ern re­gion, while the PSA has nev­er ap­plied for, nor re­ceived, recog­ni­tion.

Thus, he said, work­ers trans­ferred from the civ­il ser­vice to RHAs, or hired di­rect­ly by the Min­istry of Health, are not cov­ered by the PSA’s ne­go­ti­a­tions, even if they re­main union mem­bers.

“There’s a his­to­ry that for some rea­son, the RHAs and the PSA, led by Jen­nifer Bap­tiste and Wat­son Duke, gave the im­pres­sion that they ne­go­ti­at­ed a col­lec­tive agree­ment for the RHAs, which was not the case. But what the RHAs did was they ap­plied the terms and con­di­tions agreed with the CPO for civ­il ser­vants to the em­ploy­ees in the RHAs.

“So, if the Gov­ern­ment wants to do that this time, they could prob­a­bly do it, but it would not be a reg­is­tered col­lec­tive agree­ment.”

The af­fect­ed work­ers have be­gun tak­ing var­i­ous forms of ac­tion to dis­play their un­hap­pi­ness with the sit­u­a­tion. Sched­uled surg­eries at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal were dis­rupt­ed on Fri­day, af­ter op­er­at­ing the­atre at­ten­dants called in sick. The ac­tion was said to be linked to their frus­tra­tion over be­ing in­formed that they would not re­ceive back­pay this month.

Guardian Me­dia pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that work­ers had threat­ened to “down tools” and per­form the “bare min­i­mum” from the week of Christ­mas in­to the new year. Up­set work­ers re­port­ed­ly in­clude phar­ma­cists, phar­ma­cy as­sis­tants, phle­botomists and clerks.

Ear­li­er this month, the PSA signed a mem­o­ran­dum of agree­ment with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer for an ad­vance on its ten per cent wage in­crease cov­er­ing two ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods: 2014 to 2016 and 2017 to 2019.