Jan­nelle Bernard

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

Ser­vices at Works’ Cred­it Union branch­es in Port-of-Spain, Ari­ma, San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go are ex­pect­ed to be dis­rupt­ed over the next 90 days (three months) as em­ploy­ees take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion over a wage dis­pute.

The Bank­ing and In­sur­ance Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) said work­ers have not re­ceived a salary in­crease in four years and have be­gun a legal­ly sanc­tioned three-month strike af­ter ne­go­ti­a­tions stalled.

Speak­ing out­side the cred­it union’s Dun­don­ald Street of­fice on Mon­day, BIG­WU pres­i­dent Don De­venish said the union is seek­ing a 15 per cent wage in­crease over the three-year pe­ri­od 2023 to 2025, while man­age­ment has of­fered on­ly two per cent.

De­venish ar­gued that the cred­it union had in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in oth­er fi­nan­cial ven­tures while fail­ing to ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sate the em­ploy­ees re­spon­si­ble for gen­er­at­ing its in­come.

“We are not ask­ing for ex­trav­a­gance, we are ask­ing for fair­ness. The union’s pro­pos­al of 15 per cent spread over the three-year pe­ri­od 2023 to 2025 is rea­son­able, it’s re­spon­si­ble, it’s just,” he said.

He added, “These work­ers have gen­er­at­ed the kind of in­come that the cred­it union could now en­gage with all kinds of friv­o­lous projects that they are do­ing and they can­not pay the very work­ers who are gen­er­at­ing this in­come.”

Quot­ing a well-known proverb, De­venish said, “You do not muz­zle the ox while it is tread­ing out the grain. These are the work­ers who serve the mem­bers, who build re­la­tion­ships, who safe­guard the in­sti­tu­tion and gen­er­ate the rev­enue. Now you want to de­ny them their fair share? That is wrong. We want we 15 per cent.”

BIG­WU labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer Hay­den Her­nan­dez said the union first sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als in 2024 but re­ceived no re­sponse un­til April this year af­ter re­port­ing the mat­ter to the Min­istry of Labour.

He said the union on­ly re­ceived an in­vi­ta­tion last Thurs­day to at­tend a meet­ing in three weeks, de­scrib­ing the move as an­oth­er de­lay in what should have been a rou­tine ne­go­ti­a­tion process.

“We are go­ing to stay out here un­til we get our just due. We are not un­rea­son­able peo­ple and we have act­ed very rea­son­ably all through this time,” Her­nan­dez said.

He claimed the cred­it union’s board met last Tues­day but did not dis­cuss the wage ne­go­ti­a­tions de­spite the strike no­tice al­ready be­ing is­sued.

“This is a three-month strike by law. And the work­ers are pre­pared to spend the three months out. We have pre­pared them to stay out for the three months,” he said.

The union said its mem­bers al­so plan to at­tend the Works’ Cred­it Union an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing on Au­gust 15.

Guardian Me­dia sought a re­sponse from Works’ Cred­it Union pres­i­dent Dawn De Souza. She said she was un­able to com­ment be­cause she was in a meet­ing. Sub­se­quent calls went unan­swered.