A bright Fri­day in Fyz­abad laid bare deep di­vi­sions with­in the labour move­ment as thou­sands of work­ers marched from Av­o­cat Junc­tion to Char­lie King Junc­tion, with mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) boo­ing one union leader while oth­ers ap­plaud­ed, amid mount­ing frus­tra­tion over de­layed wage pay­ments and dif­fer­ing ap­proach­es to Gov­ern­ment en­gage­ment.

At the cen­tre of the ten­sion was TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevin Ashe, who used his ad­dress at Av­o­cat Junc­tion to re­new pres­sure over out­stand­ing salary in­creas­es and retroac­tive pay­ments un­der the April 2025 col­lec­tive agree­ment, say­ing ed­u­ca­tors are still wait­ing more than a year af­ter the deal was signed.

“Ed­u­ca­tors signed a col­lec­tive agree­ment in April 2025 and yet 14 months lat­er, we are still wait­ing on our monies,” Ashe said.

He added that re­peat­ed shifts in time­lines from the Gov­ern­ment had deep­ened un­cer­tain­ty among teach­ers.

“So we are wait­ing 14 months. We are al­so afraid that we are giv­en some time­lines. And now the goal­post has shift­ed to fis­cal year 2027.”

Ashe ar­gued the de­lays were erod­ing trust in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ne­go­ti­at­ed agree­ments.

“It will seem as if I am the prob­lem be­cause the things I speak about, and every time I speak the truth, it seems as if the goal­post goes back.”

He warned that the sit­u­a­tion could con­tin­ue to drift fur­ther.

“So who knows? Af­ter to­day, you might hear fis­cal year 2028, 2029. We will wait and see.”

The in­dus­tri­al ten­sion was un­der­scored lat­er when Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU) pres­i­dent Shawn Roberts urged work­ers to ex­er­cise pa­tience with the new ad­min­is­tra­tion, warn­ing that di­vi­sion with­in the move­ment would weak­en its bar­gain­ing strength.

“A house which is di­vid­ed can­not stand at the end of the day,” Roberts said.

He al­so used a metaphor com­par­ing po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tions to mov­ing be­yond failed re­la­tion­ships, ar­gu­ing that sta­bil­i­ty re­quires time to take hold.

“If you go in­to the next re­la­tion­ship and you’ve been abused, you have to move on again… And if you get the right re­la­tion­ship, you have to give it time to work.”

Roberts’ re­marks trig­gered a split re­ac­tion among at­ten­dees, with sec­tions of TTUTA mem­bers boo­ing his call for pa­tience, while mem­bers of the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union ap­plaud­ed.

The mo­ment re­flect­ed a wider di­vide that ran through the march it­self, where unions were unit­ed in num­bers but in­creas­ing­ly split on strat­e­gy and po­lit­i­cal align­ment.

The march un­fold­ed un­der clear skies, a stark con­trast to 2025 when heavy rain drenched par­tic­i­pants through­out the event. This year, colour and sound de­fined the pro­ces­sion as flags and ban­ners of mul­ti­ple unions filled the route, ac­com­pa­nied by cadet mu­si­cians and mu­sic trucks lead­ing the move­ment.

There was al­so a sig­nif­i­cant se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence, with po­lice units de­ployed along the route un­der the over­sight of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro.

Among those on the ground were the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, Cipri­ani Col­lege Stu­dent Guild, Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU), Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union, Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union, Postal Work­ers Union, Trinidad In­dus­tri­al San­i­ta­tion Work­ers Union, and Na­tion­al Union for Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers.

How­ev­er, the ab­sence of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union, Steel Work­ers Union and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion was no­table, re­in­forc­ing per­cep­tions of frac­tures with­in the broad­er move­ment over strat­e­gy and po­lit­i­cal align­ment.

Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tion was al­so vis­i­ble, with Min­is­ters Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Ernesto Ke­sar and Clyde El­der join­ing the march, while Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Leroy Bap­tiste at­tend­ed the ral­ly.

Adding a con­trast­ing tone, Postal Work­ers Union pres­i­dent David Forbes de­liv­ered a call for uni­ty, us­ing the an­niver­sary of the 1937 oil­field strikes to ar­gue that the labour move­ment must re­main unit­ed be­yond race or pol­i­tics.

Forbes re­ject­ed eth­nic and po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sion, in­sist­ing there is no “them”, on­ly a sin­gle work­ing-class strug­gle. He al­so crit­i­cised po­lit­i­cal rhetoric that he said fu­els di­vi­sion and called for ac­count­abil­i­ty from of­fi­cials who cam­paign as “ho­n­ourable” while work­ers re­main on min­i­mum wage.

He said postal work­ers had shown pa­tience in on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, not­ing that long-stand­ing con­tract talks were near­ing com­ple­tion, and urged the wider move­ment to re­main fo­cused on work­ers’ in­ter­ests rather than in­ter­nal di­vi­sion.

As the march wound through Fyz­abad un­der a blaze of sun­shine, flags and mu­sic, the day ul­ti­mate­ly re­flect­ed a labour move­ment si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly unit­ed in pres­ence but di­vid­ed in tone.