KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Ten­sions are set to rise on the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus from to­day when the West In­di­an Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) launch­es a Red Rev­o­lu­tion protest by march­ing to the of­fice of prin­ci­pal Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine.

The protest, dubbed “Mon­day Mad­ness,” be­gins on the greens at the UWI Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre at noon. This ac­tion fol­lows the lec­tur­ers’ with­hold­ing of stu­dents’ grades af­ter re­cent ex­am­i­na­tions to press their de­mands for a 24 per cent salary in­crease.

Last No­vem­ber, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert said that WIGUT’s de­mand for the salary in­crease with back pay amount­ing to $701 mil­lion was un­sus­tain­able as it would place a sig­nif­i­cant bur­den on tax­pay­ers.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, WIGUT pres­i­dent Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad had threat­ened a “com­plete shut­down” of the UWI cam­pus with a “Black­out Fri­day.” The union re­ject­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer of a two per cent salary in­crease for 2015-2017, ar­gu­ing that mem­bers were still earn­ing 2014 wages.

In a cir­cu­lar, the union ex­pressed grat­i­tude to mem­bers for at­tend­ing last Fri­day’s gen­er­al meet­ing and for com­ply­ing with di­rec­tives to with­hold grades and ab­stain from meet­ings.

“Please con­tin­ue to do so. We hope oth­ers will join the strug­gle and with­hold grades, pass/fail marks, and cease at­ten­dance at meet­ings,” the cir­cu­lar stat­ed.

It al­so out­lined the ex­ec­u­tive’s planned protest ac­tions for the next three weeks, urg­ing mem­bers to per­sist in with­hold­ing grades and shut­ting down all op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing non-at­ten­dance at ex­am­i­na­tion meet­ings.

The Red Rev­o­lu­tion, which con­tin­ues un­til Thurs­day, calls for all mem­bers to wear red.

“It is the first day of teach­ing for the year 2025, and we need to jolt the cam­pus ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Gov­ern­ment in­to ac­tion. Bring all your OW­TU and ATSS friends and col­leagues. Come out in your num­bers in your red WIGUT po­los or any red clothes and paint the UWIs­cape red,” the union urged.

“Gath­er at the LRC greens at noon, af­ter which you will join the WIGUT ex­ec­u­tive and march for your mon­ey to­wards the prin­ci­pal’s of­fice and hear what she and her man­age­ment team have to say about this pro­longed de­lay.”

The cir­cu­lar urged those who had not pre­vi­ous­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in protests to take ac­tion, em­pha­sis­ing that their liveli­hoods de­pend­ed on it.

White­wash Week from Jan­u­ary 27-31 will see mem­bers wear­ing white in a week of “rest and re­flec­tion.”

“Dur­ing the en­tire day, you should not an­swer your desk phones or emails. At your work­sta­tions, you can pray, med­i­tate, read, re­search, re­lax, keep fit, en­gage in deep thought and stress re­lief, and dream of an of­fer of much bet­ter salaries and im­proved ben­e­fits from your em­ploy­er,” the union ad­vised mem­bers.

WIGUT ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over work­ing on mea­gre salaries while sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es were rec­om­mend­ed for politi­cians.

“Your health and well­ness are im­por­tant since you can­not eat prop­er­ly on your pal­try 2024 salaries. You des­per­ate­ly need to re­lax and de-stress. It should not be busi­ness as usu­al on the cam­pus.”

The third week of protests, from Feb­ru­ary 3-7 will be Black­out Week, with mem­bers wear­ing black all week. WIGUT has called for a com­plete shut­down of all op­er­a­tions.