Unions face stark reality

WHEN DAVENDRANATH Tancoo announced the government would keep its promise to raise Public Services Association (PSA) salaries by ten per cent, the question that arose was whether other unions would benefit too. The Minister of Finance suggested not when he advised that all collective agreements signed in April by teachers, corporation workers and soldiers will be ratified. But Clyde Elder put any lingering doubt to rest on November 28, declaring, “An agreement made and signed is what it is.”

The former trade unionist, now a minister, continued, “The PSA put up that fight. They put up that struggle. They fought with the party – the UNC – and today, because of that fight, they are seeing the rewards. So, you can’t say, ‘Because I didn’t fight, but PSA fought, I want to now get the benefit of what PSA fought for.’ That’s not fair.”

The unions are, as one might expect, displeased. And they have reason to be. For, Mr Elder’s remarks confirm the raw realities of power and patronage that now characterise the labour movement.

You are with us or against us – that, in a nutshell, is the bitter message beneath the government’s official policy of pursuing a “Worker’s Agenda.” The resort to strict adherence to the process of negotiating with the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) is revealed to be a mere fig leaf behind which the will of the Cabinet lives. The PNM had an acrimonious relationship with unions. Yet the UNC’s position is arguably an evolution of the all-or-nothing approach of the previous government, in which only parties aligned under a coalition of interests stand to benefit from a ten per cent starting-point in reopened pay talks.

“Political alignment introduces a risk of peace by silence rather than peace by justice,” correctly noted Joanne Ogeer, secretary general of the Communication Workers’ Union, recently. “When political actors appear aligned with labour actors, negotiations are influenced by political loyalty rather than by merit or workers’ rights.”

The Office of the CPO has confirmed the PSA hike will cost $3.8 billion in back pay, as well as $420 million in recurrent expenditure. It’s worth asking whether absorbing such figures will be made possible only by excluding other workers.

Some people see some unions as being too aligned with certain political parties, while others see them as being too against others. Ancel Roget’s performative plan to bring a defamation claim against a now irrelevant political figure would appear to confirm that no love’s been lost between the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union and former officials of the Keith Rowley administration.

However, the question, as always, is whether ordinary people – firefighters, prison officers, police, security guards – will literally pay the price when the dust settles.