Leader of the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM), Ancel Roget, yesterday called on the Government to expedite the setting up of the tripartite process to prevent companies from using the prevailing economic conditions to retrench workers as a first option.
Roget was speaking in an interview with the T&T Guardian following yesterday's two-hour meeting with Labour Minister Jennifer Baptiste-Primus at her Tower C office, International Waterfront Centre, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain.
Roget said the meeting was a regularly scheduled meeting with the minister following the MOU between JTUM and the People’s National Movement (PNM), which was signed on the eve of the September 7 general election, last year.
Roget said the establishment of a tripartite mechanism was raised in the meeting.
It was in December last year that Prime Minister Keith Rowley, in an address to the nation, said he would set up the process to allow for business, labour and the Government to collectively address issues related to the country's economy in the wake of falling oil prices internationally.
Roget noted that almost two months have elapsed and the meetings have not started. He said Baptiste-Primus indicated that the Government remained committed to the process and was moving steadfastly to establish it.
Roget said he told Baptiste-Primus that it should commence before the expected mid-term review, which Finance Minister Colm Imbert said previously would be presented in late March or early April.
Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union president Vincent Cabrera and T&T Unified Teachers Association president Devanand Sinanan were among the leaders who attended the meeting.
Roget said even before the tripartite mechanism was established "employers are now sending workers home. They are using the current (economic) situation to take advantage of workers in situations where they wanted to do that in the first place."
Noting that workers were being retrenched at ArcelorMittal and other companies, Roget said, "They are using the current fall in oil and commodity prices to send workers home." That claim has been denied by employers.
But Roget said the burden of adjustment must be carried equally by everybody, and workers must not be made to bear the brunt of adjustment alone.
Roget, who is also president general of the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU), said the "Government must take a firm position on that and let the employers know they ought not to send workers home as a first option."
He said the JTUM was generally pleased with the manner in which the minister was going about her job, as she was consulting with the workers.