TTUTA: If no salary talk, we march

THE TT Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) is warning that if the Chief Personnel Officer does not meet to discuss outstanding salary negotiations, it will mobilise members for a major march through the streets of Port Spain on October 1.

TTUTA’s president Lynsley Doodhai said they have been trying to meet with CPO Angela Sinaswee-Gervais since 2015, to negotiate for a new collective agreement for 2014-2017.

“We have had numerous press conferences, sent out media releases, radio, television and newspaper interviews. TTUTA has been agitating for a very long time for the commencement of negotiations. Our teachers are getting very angry, very upset, they are becoming demotivated and frustrated because of the non-commencement of salary negotiations.

“Even at the executive level they have gotten fed up. We even picketed outside the CPO (office), but that did not jolt the employer to meet and treat with the issues with the association,” Doodhai said during a news conference yesterday at TTUTA’s head office in Curepe.

He said the general council was given the mandate that if the CPO has not called the association in to the bargaining table to meet and treat with respect to a new collective agreement, then teachers will march. Second vice-president Kyrla Robinson-Thomas said the union presented its proposals to the CPO in 2015, but they were told the CPO had received no instructions to begin negotiations.

Industrial relations officer Bryan Valentine said there was no need for the CPO to wait for directions from the Finance Minister to meet with the association. He said those instructions from the minister could come after meeting with the association.

“The meeting with the association can be made once the association demands it. We feel the CPO has been stalling, and using in some respect, the Finance Minister as an excuse not to begin negotiations and it is in this regard we have filed an action of failure to meet and greet with the association in the Industrial Court.”

Doodhai said they have come to the conclusion that enough is enough. “Since the beginning of the new academic year we have been traversing the length and breadth of the country mobilising our members. If the CPO calls us in to a meeting before the march we will have to have an emergency meeting with the general council to get directions.

“The association does not have the authority or the power to call off an action that has been called by the general council, but it is hardly likely that the action will be revoked at this time.”