Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The T&T Postal Work­ers’ Union (TTP­WU) says it in­tends to re­spond to a pe­ti­tion sent to the union by work­ers, re­quest­ing that it ac­cept a four per cent wage of­fer by the T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPost).

The let­ter con­tains sig­na­tures from 12 staff mem­bers in the South­east Di­vi­sion of the union.

The state com­pa­ny has pro­posed a salary in­crease of four per cent, dis­trib­uted as two per cent for 2014, ze­ro per cent for 2015 to 2018, and two per cent for 2019.

How­ev­er, the union has re­ject­ed this of­fer, stat­ing it was “far less than what we were ex­pect­ing” and failed to ad­dress crit­i­cal is­sues such as the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an 18.6 per cent job eval­u­a­tion and cost-of-liv­ing al­lowances.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, TTP­WU gen­er­al sec­re­tary David Forbes said he had seen the let­ter but the union’s con­sti­tu­tion sup­port­ed the union’s de­ci­sion.

“As I said ear­li­er, our con­sti­tu­tion guides us in call­ing meet­ings when­ev­er the man­age­ment pro­pos­es any in­creas­es in salary. Tra­di­tion­al­ly and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, we have done that over time, and that is what we will hold to. The ma­jor­i­ty had al­ready spo­ken re­gard­ing those meet­ings across the coun­try, in­clud­ing To­ba­go, and of course, that was the po­si­tion of the work­ers then,” he ex­plained.

Forbes not­ed, “At this point, we will be re­spond­ing to that let­ter from those work­ers, ex­plain­ing to them that a num­ber of them were not aware of the meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do. We are pre­pared to ad­dress them and ex­plain what came out of the meet­ing held in San Fer­nan­do. The con­sti­tu­tion­al meet­ing re­lates to how we han­dle ne­go­ti­a­tions with our mem­bers.”

Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the sit­u­a­tion, TTPost re­port­ed that the union did not at­tend a sched­uled ne­go­ti­a­tion meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 16, de­spite agree­ing to the date in De­cem­ber.

The union had raised con­cerns about the meet­ing venue, Drew Manor in San­ta Cruz, cit­ing cost is­sues and sug­gest­ing that TTPost’s Pi­ar­co head­quar­ters would be a more suit­able lo­ca­tion.

Forbes al­so ac­cused the union of en­cour­ag­ing the work­ers, which the union pres­i­dent stat­ed could con­sti­tute an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence.

“We find it rather strange that the man­age­ment is, in our view, so­lic­it­ing and bul­ly­ing the work­ers to ac­cept this 4 per cent, ful­ly aware that we have al­ready en­gaged with the work­ers to help them un­der­stand what was of­fered. In our view, this con­sti­tutes an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence, as the man­age­ment is at­tempt­ing to ne­go­ti­ate with groups of work­ers out­side the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process. We will be writ­ing to them, call­ing for an end to this prac­tice, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en what tran­spired yes­ter­day with these groups of work­ers,” he said.

How­ev­er, TTPost stat­ed yes­ter­day that the union had not sub­mit­ted its coun­ter­pro­pos­als for the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods 2011-2013, 2014-2016, and 2017-2019, which were due by the first week of this month. These coun­ter­pro­pos­als are nec­es­sary for pro­gress­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, TTPost man­ag­ing di­rec­tor George Alex­is said, “We to­tal­ly and un­equiv­o­cal­ly de­ny that we are en­deav­our­ing to ne­go­ti­ate out­side the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go with the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union. That is as much as I would want to say on that.”

Alex­is added, “We would be break­ing the law if we were to try to ne­go­ti­ate with staff or en­cour­age staff in any way out­side the prop­er bar­gain­ing process. I must em­pha­sise that we have not been en­cour­ag­ing the staff to do any­thing of this sort.”

Al­though the union ini­tial­ly ob­ject­ed to hold­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions at Drew Manor in San­ta Cruz, they in­tend to meet with the man­age­ment there to­day.