3 days Ago
Within a few short weeks, the situation at the Port of Port of Spain has moved from inconvenience to emergency and may soon become a crisis. A day after Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan assured the public that operations were back to normal, the port was shut down when some employees stayed away from work on Monday. In an interview with the Express, a port worker said they were sending Minister Sinanan a message that nothing had been resolved.
That individual only admitted this after being guaranteed anonymity—a necessary condition since, as the port workers and their union representatives well know, it is illegal for them to take protest action. Section 67 (2) of the Industrial Relations Act says, “An employer or a worker carrying on or engaged in an essential service shall not take industrial action in connection with any such essential service.” Sub-section (5) also lays out the penalties for any trade union that calls on essential workers to engage in such action.
Port operations are number eight in the 13 categories listed on the First Schedule of the act. Since such action has been ongoing for weeks and no one has been charged, the law was in imminent danger of lapsing into absurdity. Yesterday, however, the Industrial Court granted an injunction ordering port workers to return to work.
While a necessary measure, this does not resolve the impasse between the Port Authority and its employees. In its statement announcing the injunction, the Authority said “it remains committed to dialogue to resolve the wage negotiation impasse and restore normalcy at the Port”. With Christmas shopping already under way and a general election due next year, the trade unions know they have the upper hand in negotiations.
It is not coincidental that postal workers are also gearing up to take protest action this week, either. They are looking for a salary increase that was promised since 2011. The Seamen and Waterfront Workers’ Trade Union (SWWTU) is demanding a 12% wage increase for the port workers as promised given a Memorandum of Agreement signed under the People’s Partnership government.
Meanwhile, ordinary citizens will bear the brunt of shortages and higher prices if these issues are not resolved quickly. And, while the trade unions appear intransigent, this situation is also, to a large extent, the poisoned fruit of government incompetence. Employee negotiations are supposed to occur every three or four years, but the Government continually fails to meet deadlines.
This would be bad enough for ordinary workers but, for essential ones, the Government has an enhanced obligation to deal with their demands in a timely and fair fashion. Even granting that the legislation is necessary, the act deprives workers of the fundamental right to withhold their labour. In that context, the Government’s negotiators should be straining every sinew to conclude negotiations and avoid giving workers reason to take even surreptitious protest action.
It does not appear that has been happening. All stakeholders must come together to find a solution everyone can live with, instead of making life harder for the rest of the country..
