JTUM trying to salvage Labour Day, NATUC to celebrate spirits

IN an ordinary year, the trade union movement would have been gearing up for the annual June 19 Labour Day celebrations in Fyzabad.

However, the covid19 pandemic has put the world on hold, including celebrations to mark the contribution of ordinary working class men and women to the development of TT.

The Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM), which has cancelled most of its planned activities, was busy working out a strategy to salvage some kind of celebration.

Ozzi Warwick, executive member of the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU), which is a member of JTUM and the leading union in Labour Day celebrations, told the Newsday on Friday, “There will be a celebration of Labour Day.”

However, Warwick said they were yet to finalise the shape and form of what the celebration, now in its 83rd year, would look like.

While the OWTU had cancelled its calendar of events including the school’s quiz, Labour Day calypso competition, cycling and the Butler Classics, the thanksgiving and wreath-laying ceremony at the gravesite of the late Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler and the Labour Day rally were not.

Speaking on behalf of the National Trade Union Centre (NATUC), general secretary Michael Anisette said it is hardly likely trade unionists would be able to congregate in brotherhood as they normally do.

“But there would be a celebration of spirits.”

Weighing in on how the covid19 pandemic has changed the world, Anisette said, “It my humble opinion the covid19 pandemic has been a blessing in disguise – like a divine intervention for us to wake up and really start to speak to humanity and humility.”

He said the virus has, “opened the trade unions’ minds. It has demonstrated the failure of the system we operate in.”

Anisette said it has underscored the disparity which exists in the society and has brought about a global call, including from the Caribbean region, for a better society that put people first and lives before profit.

Observing how people who were considered the underdogs are now the frontline workers being applauded by the general public, he lashed out at government for ignoring these same workers who are yet to benefit from outstanding wage negotiations that are eight and 12 years old.

“While the general public clap for the frontline workers and the support staff who have been working to keep the economy going, we are seeing that government has found money to distribute to big business and several other people.

“Curiously, there have not been any attempts to address the wages of workers who we praise so much. You cannot go to the grocery or to the market or to the gas station or pay your taxi fare with just a clap and ‘let us thank the workers’. These workers have not received wages and salary going back some instances to 2008 and the majority from 2012.

“If we love these workers as we say we do, why has government not seen it fit to address the issues of outstanding wage negotiations for these groups of people we say we love?”

Anisette said, in the context of Labour Day the pandemic has made workers and the trade union movement more appreciative of the strength and collective wisdom of the movement and the importance of workers, “who we never looked up at.”

He said, in the TT hierarchical society where engineers, lawyers, doctors are held in high esteem, in this new dynamic it is the ordinary cleaner, port workers, nurses, cooks in the hospital, grocery and pharmacy workers who are so critical to the existence, safety and health of TT.

He said these new narratives means that while the unions would not necessarily have to be gathered in the same place to commemorate the day, the movement and workers would be emboldened by their understanding of the critical roles they play in any society.