PSA "massive" demonstration fails to get mass participation

Government Senator and trade union David Abdullah addresses workers during Tuesday's PSA demonstration

Efforts by the labour movement to get workers to abandon their jobs and join a demonstration in Port of Spain Tuesday appear to have failed.

Watson Duke, President of the Public Services Association, had boasted that 25,000 workers would join what he predicted would be a massive six-hour protest. He claimed that the event was a success with 20,000 in attendance.

However media reports say police estimated the crowd to be close to 2,000. And other reports say there was little disruption at government offices that were supposed to be shut down by the protest that was organised by the PSA to dramatise their demands for high wages.

Labour leaders collectively denounced the Government for what they called an inflexible approach to wage negotiations with the Public Services Association (PSA).

Duke was joined by several union leaders, including National Trade Union Centre (NATUC) head Michael Annisette, who had previously refused to appear on the same platform with Duke. Annisette, who is supporter of the opposition PNM, said "strategic planning" made his presence necessary.

Annisette called the Government’s five per cent offer to public servants “inherently unfair and fundamentally economically wrong” adding that the economic reality is that for any economy to grow, "workers’ wages, terms and conditions and salaries had to meet the inflationary measures."

Ancel Roget, head of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU), demanded an apology to workers from Finance Minister Winston Dookeran. The minister had warned that anyone who engaged in any unauthorised industrial action would be liable to a fine. Roget called that an insult to workers.

Government Senator and president of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and Non-Governmental Organisations David Abdulah also spoke to workers. He called for all wage negotiations affecting workers to be resolved in a fair and equitable manner.

“We must stand together as working people in unity and in solidarity to continue to pursue the workers’ agenda...which we identified on the 18th of April and approved...which we further concretised in October of last year... that workers’ agenda which identified not only the settlement of all negotiations but a wide range of issues affecting workers and poor people in Trinidad and Tobago.”

He also demanded an amendment to the Industrial Relations Act IRA. “That Industrial Relations Act is an anti-worker piece of law which was passed in June of 1972 when there was a state of emergency imposed by the then Eric Williams Government of this country,” Abdulah added.