2006-04-03
Good Evening and special Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
We generally allow all the experts and among them, the quacks, prostitutes and invalids to have their say and prognostications on all of the issues without our necessarily involving in the everyday mess that they create – unless they affect OWTU of course.
One national joker set out sometime last week to represent the case of a group of professionals against the Registration, Recognition and Certification Board of which the national joker is also a member. The labouring clown, in our generously modest view, was driven by his obscene opportunism to not only hurt the case of the professionals whom he purported to be representing but to also promote elitism and bring the RR and CB into disrepute.
And what is perhaps more dangerous is that the fool seems blissfully oblivious to his unprincipled ignorance of the simple and quite ordinary. Labour as a consequence, finds itself so very heavily burdened and with an additional cross to bear. Ask the Carib workers! Let us level the playing field and find out whether the Ministers of Industry and Labour will bring their political influence to bear on the Chairman of the Registration, Recognition and Certification Board to effect the immediate regularization of those Carib Brewery workers’ election of a Trade Union to properly represent them.
Lest it be misunderstood – the OWTU stands in support and in solidarity with all workers in every principled struggle in which they are engaged.
The Doctors, whether they be at the RHA East, Central, West, Tobago, North or the Public Health Services are entitled to membership in a Union of their choice. They may establish and register as many small professionals associations as there are RHA’s and sub-regional health authorities but Doctors by themselves do not the Medical and Health services – public or private – constitute.
And Union is also about solidarity not insularity. It is therefore idiotic – from the serious Union perspective – to promote insularity and elitism through the fragmentation of Bargaining Units. Any such fragmentation is a tool of the capitalist employer to destroy solidarity amongst different classes of workers often employed in the same businesses or establishments.
It is the opportunist forward on the football field who is found loafing and most often caught in the offside trap. Equally, it is the unprincipled politician and foundationless trade unionist who will swing with every wind and drift with every tide. And it will be a weak Chairman of a totally compromised Registration, Recognition and Certification Board who would be bound by political instructions to further reduce any respect which the Board, as it is at present constituted, still has. Should this travesty take place the RR and CB will be made to revisit its recent determination of the matter between CWU and Courts (Trinidad) Limited. There will be no different stroke for different folks.
All workers, every worker has a right to equality of treatment before the law. And the Hon. Ministers must know that if the priest could play, we will insist on controlling the game.
Have a Good Evening
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.
2006-04-05
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
The lynch mob which assembled outside the Couva Magistrates Court on Monday was a bold indication of a system gone desperate and wild and perilously close to being out of control. There is where we are! That is how it is! The crime statistics are indeed horrendous. Everybody looking for everybody else to blame.
National Security Minister Joseph’s nineteenth hour lamentations in the Senate – that the homicide level, especially for the month of March was unacceptable – are hollow platitudes and are indeed unacceptable. The Government seems clueless about everything but how to be wasteful. Mr. Joseph’s assurance that they would be taking measures to ensure no repeat of last month’s blood bath and that the Government was focusing on the two main causes of the high homicide rate – drugs and gangs – impresses none but the most naïve amongst us. Senator Joseph could as much continue to dream and suggest that ‘Deadman’, (4) or ‘Crapaud’ (13) will be the Play Whe numbers which will call alternately for the first and second plays each Tuesday and Saturday and double back on each intervening Monday next month. Of course, all of this sounds foolish and wild but all it does is depict the dotishness that those in authority spew all the time.
And Minister Joseph’s junior whom many had credited with some sense and brilliance is only now finding out that Drugs are a major cause of crime as if he did not know who controls the drugs, the guns and the many miscreants who are destroyed for it and by it. Last week we said that the barbarism against which we had long warned is here upon us, is alive and well and kicking.
We agreed with the remark that ‘only a vicious monster with no sense of conscience and little hope of redemption could so heinously put an end to the existence of Akiel and Dane and now Sean. We alluded that we were breeding that monster for much longer that it takes for an elephant to conceive and deliver a calf. Indeed, we have been breeding the monster for longer than sixteen years ago. Let us retrace our steps carefully and we may find that those who squandered our values and resources and abandoned our small human fortunes and training and development and sense of self and pride and wholesome aspirations – those in Government and expected to give good governance, in leadership and parenthood – most of them, we may find to have behaved like the licentious farmer who had gone wildly spreading his seeds on the Friday and Saturday nights and then on the Sunday Morning kneel in supplication fervently praying for a crop failure.
We are today reaping the whirlwind of the cursed wind that was sewn. The chickens are coming home to roost. Crime and Poverty have realized phenomenal growth. Development planning has all but been abandoned and to the extent that there is any development at all, people have been removed from the centre to make way for industrial economic growth through the installation of environmentally unfriendly smelters and other energy gobbling plants and complexes.
And the lack of development breeds and gives growth to the monsters!
And Messrs Manning and Joseph and Enill and Hinds and Panday and Maharaj and Bissessar and Mark and Baksh seem unable to ameliorate it. Indeed there is the view that they may only continue to exacerbate the deterioration of the body politic.
Have a good evening. And to the 18,751 bright hopes of our future, writing the SEA exam tomorrow – Best Wishes! Do your best! Take good guidance and God’s Blessings!
I am Errol K. Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks!
2006-04-10
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
It is becoming clearer – position of Trade and Industry Minister, Kenneth Valley on matters relating to the local manufacturing sector – its shareholders and employees and our broader national and regional interests. And if Mr. Valley is indeed representing the Government’s position, none but the most rabid, moribund and lacking independent thought among its supporters, would agree with the Manning Government’s vision on developing industry and local manufacturing in Trinidad and Tobago in its entirety.
What, clearly is Ken Valley’s position on local cement production and whatever ought to be protection against a cheaper imported and dumped product?
Well, we recall the hard concrete battle (no pun intended) that was mounted and fought to keep TCL, Arawak and Carib Cement out of the jaws of multinational Cemex in 2002. We recall that contrary to the national and regional solidity of the positions adopted by the OWTU, ordinary and some institutional shareholders, workers and the governments of Barbados and Jamaica, when he was approached Kenneth Valley, Trade and Industry Minister of Trinidad and Tobago unrepently advised that had he owned any shares at all in TCL, he would – without second thought- have sold those shares to Cemex the multinational cement juggernaut. It was since then that the TCL workers, their representative, the OWTU, and many progressive persons in Trinidad and Tobago, came to regard the Honourable Kenneth Valley to be a big mook without a Dashiki.
We are not surprised therefore, although disappointed with much revulsion, that Ken Valley would unjustifiably initiate the removal of the Common External Tariff on imported cement to avoid a shortage perceived in his government’s dream of an impaired vision of the ‘new Industrial State’ in which there are no nationals but a handful of stateless technocrats in control.
We are assured that there is no current shortage of cement. We are satisfied too that current and projected future production will well surpass the demands which planned activity in the construction sector will require.
The Minister’s fulminations are no more than the characteristics of the long time commission agent of foreign interests which were not necessarily compatible with the local and national interests.
The Minister, we are advised, did not call on TCL so as to be informed on the role that that local company – formerly state owned – may play in the Government’s everwidening and questionably unsustainable construction boom. Nor did the Minister find out by any means, the company’s own programmes for increased production and improved productivity systems to cater for growing domestic demand.
The government’s conclusion therefore, that domestic production of cement is inadequate to meet demand, is palpably flawed and the proposed removal of CET and an invitation to some foreign outfit to come and exploit the gullibility of anti-local interests are another declaration against the workers and shareholders of local manufacturing. And only a neo-colonial mook in Government will so wantonly gamble the country’s local interests.
This must be another call for the Dashikis and the Dhotis sewn by threads of decency and principle to march together again.
Peace! Let us deal with our national and local concrete realities. Good Evening
I am Errol K. Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks!
2006-04-19
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
Welcome back to the reality of hard work after the long holiday weekend of fete, fetish, fun, rest, recreation and relaxation. We suspect that there is much more that is hidden than revealed in connection with the threatened imposition of price control mechanisms on Cement and the severe water distribution problems to which Central and South Trinidad have been subjected over the past three(3) weeks.
It is not to go without notice that food prices have been climbing uncontrollably high without a murmur from the authorities – neither government nor the importers and local producers. Remember their response to the poor peoples’ cry about the high price of bread just some time back? An obviously clear case of different strokes for differently affected folks! That’s just how it is! And, in our most recent experience, it took the ravages of Aspergillosis, otherwise known as Brooder Pneumonia, to drive down the price of chicken. And as chicken took a dive the price of fish just kept climbing as there is no support for the chicken farmer or the fisherman nor is there any protection for the ordinary consumer. That’s the way it is!
So how come the keeper of the national wallet and Lord Chancellor of the Trinidad and Tobago exchequer is suddenly moved to address the price and TCL’s ability to meet the supply requirement of cement for a burgeoning construction sector led essentially by the government. No body, absolutely no body, will be fooled into even thinking that love and caring for the small man and his family are the reason for Prime Minister’s threatened sanctions against Trinidad Cement Limited and the local manufacturing sector.
We hasten to assert that TCL too might have some hidden skeletons in their silos and are yet to remove the ambiguities and concretize its production capacity, its actual production and current and projected demands in the local market at prices which provide a fair shareholder’s ROI.
But we suspect that local interests are being subverted to promote instead the interest of the much touted ‘big player contractor’ in the construction industry. ‘OWTU Speaks’ has unearthed a Malaysian connection with tons of cement which new local confederates are organizing to dump on the Trinidad and Tobago market.
It must not be allowed!
As for the water shortage in Central, San Fernando, La Romaine, Penal, Fyzabad and other southern districts – we are questioning the integrity of the process, plant and equipment at the Desalination facilities at Point Lisas.
After all, the Desalination is by any industry standard – a new plant. And a new plant, properly installed and well operated – by modern industry standards – should maintain a 95% - 98% on line factor. But in the event that there is a major breakdown adequate spares ought to be readily available. It seems that this is not the case at the Desalt Plant.
We hear that there are problems with some four or eight strainers. How are these strainers installed? Shouldn’t they be in a simple manifold stystem with parallel connections which would facilitate their alternate introduction and removal for cleaning and repair without interruption of that essential water production and distribution service?
Something is fishy in that salt water project which was supposed to facilitate ‘water for all’ since 2000. Could it be that we are seeing some retaliation to the A.G’s assault on the criminal acts of corruption alleged to have been perpetrated by the malfeasant money sharks of an earlier administration?
What water will wash salt from those wounds?
Have a reflective Evening
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks!
2006-04-21
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
Thank God it’s Friday and the end of another week of severe testing of the workers’ and poor peoples’ patience.
On the matter of the continuing imposition of a water distribution crisis on the people of Central and Southern Districts of Trinidad, the Minister of Public Utilities is invited to institute the most thorough of investigations into the circumstances which led to the failure of Desalcott’s to produce and supply water to the extent of its contract obligations to the Water and Sewerage Authority of Trinidad and Tobago.
There is a strong body of opinion that the reasons advanced for the strains which Central and Southern district residents have been made to undergo over the past two weeks are very much like the Desalcott strainers which failed to hold water. But say what!
Another nine days and we join the rest of the world in the celebration of that heroic struggle – one hundred and twenty (120) years ago – for the eight (8) hour day and the recognition, respect and dignity of labour. That was what the Hay Market riot was all about.
The celebration of May Day – International Workers’ Day – is about continuing the struggle for Social Justice; Equal Pay for Equal Pay; Decent Jobs, Decent Jobs, Decent Pay and Job Security for All; Training and Skills Development; Permanent Appointments in Permanent Jobs; Modern Health Care and Decent Retirement Benefits; Affordable Prices for Food, Housing, Education and Social Services.
All of these are certain to encompass all of the peoples’ right and entitlement to safe and sustainable communities and protected clean and healthy environments; the enjoyment of life and liberty and protection by the law, from crime, criminal tendencies, official corruption and other political excesses.
For May Day 2006 the OWTU will call on its membership to come together in one place to reflect on all the issues that affect their lives, their security and family interests. We will come together to demand the settlement of wage and salary issues at Petrotrin, Trinmar, Powergen, Damus, Trinidad Aggregate. We will come together to demand fair treatment of our claims for equity consistent with the SRC recommendations for remuneration arrangements for holders of Public Officers – and whose remuneration depends on the sweat and sacrifice of the Energy Sector workers.
We will bring back the significance of the May Day observances on Monday May 1st , 2006 beginning at 8 a.m. at the Head Quarters of the OWTU.
Down South
Stay Tuned.
I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!
2006-04-24
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
The judgement this morning must have caught many disciples and their detractors flat footed.
The Chief Magistrate seemed to have given very great thought to the evidence and all to of the submissions made by eminent counsel on both sides of the matter for which the former Prime Minister and now Leader of the Opposition, stood before the court. One might ask the question – “What else would the Chief Magistrate have taken all this time – since March 27th – to do, if not to weigh very carefully all of the depositions made before him in the case of Mr. Panday being charged with an offence under the Integrity in Public Life Act?”
And very importantly – His Worship would no doubt have also considered how the sanctity of the law and its related public interest would be affected and served by whatever his considered decision.
In response to the judgement of the Court, there have since been a few wild retorts which have parochially demanded that Mr. Panday should be afforded special treatment by virtue of his having been a Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition. Bull crap! Mr. Panday – because of his having been Law Maker, Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition should know better, do better and set wholesome values and examples in his conduct in Public Office. “Different Strokes for Different Folks” is the catalyst for disrespect and lawlessness.
Even Mr. Panday’s last immediate pre-judgement remarks suggested that the laws and the courts ought to be respected if one would prevent a degeneration to anarchy and chaos.
Mr. Panday has offered wise counsel here and it is to be regretted that he was not himself guided hitherto by such admonition.
The country will be a much better place if there is respect; equity; justice and a less skewed distribution of our abundant national resources. Next Monday we join the rest of the world in the celebration of that heroic struggle – 120 years ago – for the eight(8) hour day and the recognition, respect and dignity of labour. That was what the Hay Market Riot was all about in 1886.
The celebration of May Day – International Workers’ Day – is about continuing the struggle for Social Justice; Equal Pay for Equal Work; Decent Jobs, Decent Pay and Job Security for All; Permanent Appointments in Permanent Positions; Modern Health Care and Decent Retirement Pensions; Affordable Prices for Food, Housing and Social Services.
For this May Day 2006 the OWTU calls on all its members to come together in one place to report and reflect on all the issues affecting our jobs, our lives, our security and family interests. The convoluted state of industrial relations and Management excesses at Petrotrin are chief among those issues. We will assemble and March for the settlement of Wage and Salary Negotiations, Job Evaluation and Job Organisation Review issues at Petrotrin, Trinmar, National Petroleum, PowerGen, Trinidad Cement Limited, UWI, Trinidad Aggregate, T&TEC, and in the Manufacturing Sectors.
We will assemble and march with other workers and the unemployed and underemployed; community groups and other organizations fighting to protect the environment and against crime, corruption and misconduct by persons in public offices.
Next Monday we will bring back the significance of May Day to the Worker/Employer/Political/Industrial relationships in Trinidad and Tobago.
The action is Down South in Sando!
Stay Tuned!
I am Errol Mc Leoc for OWTU Speaks!