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OWTU SPEAKS 2007 09 03

Good evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks.

We were thinking that there is really little difference between the IMF official who instructs against our having COLA in local collective agreements, and the NIPDEC official who directs on our building construction programme and the use of our current windfall resources to take us to first world country status in 2020 including the priority item of a $148m official residence and diplomatic centre above an island hospital in Tobago or a first world developed regional hospital in Point Fortin or Santa Flora.  Yes! We make bold to say that there is little, if any, difference between the two officials enunciating policy positions on matters which affect us now and will continue to do so in the future.

The two are the spitting images of the massa from whom we thought we had unshackled ourselves 45-50 years ago; they ought not to be expected to identify with the people interests of Trinidad and Tobago; they subscribe to an unconscionable free market system that unfairly dismisses small economies through the process of ‘devil take hindmost’; the inflation which adversely affects our monetary value and purchasing power is supported by functions of the programmes and systems which they propagate and subscribe to, and more over, they are the beneficiaries of our local authorities’ subjugation of ourselves at the altar of foreign white superiority! 

We have already dismissed the IMF’s antiworker anti-COLA instruction to the Government and we condemn the Finance Minister’s surrender of authority to Mr. Max Alier.  We shall continue to treat with contempt the conspiracy which they are perpetrating against labour and the collective bargaining process.  On September 21 we shall do and say more about that.  We also find it impertinent that a cold hearted foreigner will arrogate unto himself the authority to justify for us the national government’s construction of a $148m palatial residence and diplomatic centre a top priority item over so many necessary projects including schools which could not be opened today.

Mr. Calder Hart, we think, had stepped out of his bounds to tell independent Trinidad and Tobago – 45 years after how we should spend our national earnings erecting water front tall buildings, edifices to alter our skylines and Executive Mansions.  How much more first world would we be beyond Britain whose #10 Downing is just a terraced residence?  Five hundred years ago they fooled us with trinkets and shiny glass whose value was zilch. Today we invite them to fool us with glitzy but hollow structures.  The more things change the more they remain the same if they did not grow worse.

OWTU SPEAKS 2007-09-05

Good evening faithful listeners, countrymen, friends and comrade citizens, and welcome to the OWTU Speaks!  Did we hear a call to ‘Ban’ arbitrary polls such as was commissioned by the Political Leader of the PNM to determine the performance and profile of his Members of Parliament, and whether they qualify to run again?  Seems to us that the major problem is really the criteria that these MP’s must meet.  It is not clear whether self advancement, gambling, cussing to the annoyance of others or not walking the constituency in one’s five (5) year term pf office are the disqualifiers from sponsorship in the next round.  What seems the case is that it is mortally disadvantageous for one’s score to be in the Valley of death such as Ken’s or higher than the Boss’ like in John Rahael’s case. What else should we think? – Valley is to be eliminated because he has earned a disastrously low score while on the other hand, Rahael is quitting because he scored higher than Prime Minister himself.  This is madness, isn’t it?  But it is said that the Gods first send mad those whom the wish to destroy!  And power in the hands of the puerile and politically immature could be maddening.  Of course, we ………w….e…i….i most of us anyway – will shed no tears for Rahael, Valley, Diane, Fitzgerald, Achong, Franklyn, Eric, Boynes, Eudine or any other millstone if that’s what they are.  We are concerned only that it will be woe unto the people who stand against totalitariasm especially after the Emperor secures constitutional majority in the next General Elections.  What else should one think?  There is a political wind of change blowing through the Caribbean and being made obscure by the destructive slams of Deane and Felix.  We have failed to take note of last December’s lesson to then incumbents in St. Lucia followed months later by change in the Bahamas and two days ago the fall of those who thought they were secure and in charge in Jamaica.

It is true that the situation here is quite different with a most disorganized splintering of opposition forces and all that but it is also true that a day is a long time in politics. 

Does anybody remember Muriel Donawa’s assertion as to what PNM Stood for while she, Muriel, served as a member of the trio in 1986-1991?

Opposition parties have a way of exploding into different factions when they find nothing to fight against and instead beat up on themselves.  Not so with governing parties – especially when there is plenty money to spend and the very ambitious develop illusive visions of grandeur – they vomit in their own State Rooms and they implode. 

But one might ask – ‘who is the OWTU to question?’ Well, if you did not know – the OWTU is people, and all of the people are affected by the political things that other people do.  And, although not a political party itself, the OWTU has every right to challenge and do all such things incumbent upon itself to ensure a healthier body politic in our land.  As many as are of that opinion say ‘Aye’ – those of the contrary opinion say ‘no’.

Countrymen, friends and comrade citizens – the Ayes have it – resoundingly.

Have a good evening – be safe.

I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!

OWTU SPEAKS 2007 09 07

Good evening dear friends, Comrade Citizens, country folk and faithful listeners, and welcome to the OWTU Speaks!  London Bridge is falling down even as the emperor erects a multimillion fortress into which he will retreat and ensconce himself after his own soldiers have deserted him.  This one is no General Patos nor Admiral Augustus.  This one is no more than an ordinary deckhand who escaped after his captain and mates were taken down in battle.  He caulked his leaking vessel only so much as to sail to a safe port and then ordered his more ordinary sailors to walk the gang plank.  Ten (10) have gone and more are going.  All is not well in the State Room!  When the Emperor talks not a damn dog must bark.  Only the totally sycophantic will be entrants in the race so that those who breast the tape first past the post would absolutely committed and faithful to the cause of installing an all-powerful Executive President.  Then, we shall all rue the day when our ‘Putative’ father of the nation will proclaim – “I am monarch of all I survey, my right, there is none to dispute.  From the centre at St. Ann’s all round to the sea, I am lord over man and brute.”  Trinidad and Tobago must not allow this.  It just must not be allowed! Indeed, we will be condemning our country to a brand of totalitarianism which will be reversed by popular uprising if a constitutional majority is handed to Patos or the Bas.  It must not be allowed!  What we need is a regeneration of decency, morality and integrity in our local politics.  We need new commitments to the interest of Trinidad and Tobago.  We need new commitments to the interest of Trinidad and Tobago.  We need a new commitment to inter-racial solidarity.  We must dismiss and abandon the politics of race and religion and other divisive means of holding on to power.  We must dismiss and punish the corrupt – all of the corrupt and malfeasant – across our political spectra.  We must demand that all who wish to govern must come clean – we must challenge and repudiate the pretenders and self righteous and steups at the pontification.  We must insist that the country deserves better than mediocrity with which we are presented by our governors.

Let us demand a new ethic to work and to governance!  Let us demand a new arrangement in which the election date is resident in statute rather than zippered in some dictator’s back pocket!

Trinidad & Tobago is not beyond redemption – at least not yet!  We think that a bright future is yet ahead but we must get beyond the backward politics, victimization and debilitating practices which stultify the growth of the national body politic.

If only we would put party before self, country before party and God before all – what a wonderful place this would be!  Have a safe one! Put down the Guns!  Save the Youth! Love and respect the elderly and enjoy the weekend T & T.  I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!

OWTU SPEAKS 2007 09 12

Good evening ardent listeners, welcome to OWTU Speaks.  It is no camera trick; it is either that the rocks in Bopeep’s head are going through a volcanic tumble or that both his eyes are now kokey.  The ‘People’ put a bigger crowd in the University of Woodford Square that anybody else had ever been able to do – that is fact!  Whether 20K, 25K or 30K – whether all of them gathered in the Square last Sunday will vote for COP, is really not a certainty at this time, we venture to suggest.  What is most significant is that those thousands of people have all migrated from the UNC and the PNM – searching for something new, different, something with promise, something with selfless leadership.  Whether Dookeran captured the imagination and support of all those who migrated and the 32% of the electorate which are undecided is another matter.  And although Dookeran appeared beaten by the occasion, it is early times yet.  If I were he, I’d either fire my speech writer or hire a good one and I’d also do like Winston Churchill and practice before a mirror.  Even so, Dookeran is ahead of the other contestants in the race – so much so that the pressure on them is causing mook and the crook to further belittle themselves by their nonsensical comments about dook’s challenge.  Mook is beginning to expose the whole white of his own eyes as he looks for the fear in others.’  Poor fellow.  Nincompoop!  We are independent of all of them and when the day comes we will put our mark with whomever appears to be best inclined to represent the workers’ interests and that of the national community.

We are fed up with the bureaucratic bungling and autocratic mismanagement of salary negotiations and other workers’ issues now before the Public Sector Negotiating Committee and the legislative process of the parliament.  And it is not just the OWTU and its members.

The teachers are expected to deliver quality education to our children – the future of the nation – but teachers are treated shabbily by the CPO, the PSNC and the Government.  Imagine negotiations being dragged out for more than eighteen (18) months and frustrated by five (5) Ministers and a Chief personnel Officer all of whom had their remuneration levels and conditions of employment substantially improved three (3) times in the last five (5) years.

The workers at the Water and Sewerage Authority have been negotiating forever and have had to protest every other day for the proper treatment of the issues affecting them.  The Water and Sewerage Authority and its relationship with its employees fall under the Essential Services Section of the IRA and just like the Teachers, the workers of WASA are treated in an obscenely unessential way with contempt.

The Prison Officers are identified as a key section of our law enforcement and rehabilitation services, yet they are treated in worse ways than some criminal inmates of the Penal System.  The Prison Officers are made to still fight today for a forty (40) hour work week and decent remuneration.  And our Fire Officers continue to be denied Equity of treatment in the Protective Services.

The workers of T & REC and Power Gen – also belonging to the Essential Services Sector and Energy Based, are becoming exasperated by the recalcitrance of their managements, the CPO and the PSNC.  Those workers insist upon their just demand that essential services workers be treated in essential ways.  The Petrotrin workers are prepared to effect wide spread protest action across the company in defence of production levels, Pensions merger benefits and job security.  All of these workers like their comrades at NP will resist strenuously the establishment of a Super Energy Conglomerate which will subvert workers’ job security and trade Union effectiveness.  The TSTT workers have also become impatient with the delay in their salary negotiations and the threat to their job security.

Time does no allow today an elaboration of the issues affecting the workers at NIB, Bureau of Standards, PTSC, CDA and Civil Aviation nor the hundreds of security officers represented by the Estate Police Association.

All of these aforementioned workers and their Unions and Associations are being mobilized to stage a Unity March in Port of Spain next week Friday September 21^st.  And we shall demand that the authorities – “Settle All Negotiations before Elections.”  “Workers are Voters – Settle All Negotiations Before elections.”

Stay Tuned!  I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks!

Good evening dear friends, comrades and fellow citizens – welcome to the OWTU Speaks.

The politics is becoming more and more interesting as the election date shifts from right back pocket to left fob in the ‘sister-boy’-fitting trousers of the early sixties saga boy finish.  Even the language and the gesticulation are not of contemporary intelligent political gait.  The emperor is outfoxing himself because he is too clumsy and self opinionated.  And the silver fox is gone and is beginning – before he is quieted – to hear lines in his political requiem being read.  What is very funny about this one is that the Bas is responding to his eulogy.  Listen carefully to the Emperor and Bas and you will hear two (2) outfoxed politicians spewing more gobar than the ton loads of horse manure that was once a Caroni by product.

The Emperor, if he had political savvy, would have called the elections in June, July or august or even by now.  He is now stuck with considerations of Eid and Divali and the November Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Uganda, Africa.  He is tied up like a Sunday morning crab whose right gundy will crush anything which it happens to hold on to.  Poor Ken – his buffoonery will not save him from the valley of political death and his excruciating pain for calling his boss a mook and expressing dissent in matters on which the emperor has fixations.  The man will not tolerate any expression of views which disagree with his.  If his camera trick points to Woodford Square having a small crowd of 5,000 – then 5,000 it is according to Patrick’s gospel!  Not a dam dog must howl anything to the contrary!  Not Diane, not Fitzy, not even Rowdy!  Shut up!

I am monarch of the PNM which I bequeathed to myself.  My right to rule or ruin it, there must be none to dispute from Carenage to Arima I am Patrick the Emperor, I will build in the East I will erect them in the West and construct them in the South.  And in five years if there is no money all would be drinking bitter gall if there is no honey!

We are dealing here with a man going mad or one whom the Gods wish to destroy.  He believes that he is invincible – anointed to rule.  The maddest of the megalomaniacs are those who believe that God has something to do with their accidental installation above the people.  But they are soon cut off as the Gods don’t sleep.

There are real convulsions about to take place in the national politics and the two major parties will be stunned by their own self inflictions.  The top is with its heads stuck in the clouds but the ground is looking up and moving forward.  Elections are more than likely set for December if more crucial and threatening circumstances do not force them to October 28^th.

Stay tuned listen for the bell and have a good evening.  I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.

OWTU SPEAKS 2007 09 26

The worker’s power is in the combination of all workers’ efforts – his strength is in his being an active member of the Union, whichever is the Union.

And the effective strength of the Union is in the united action and solidarity of all workers and their Trade Unions.

Good evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks.  Last Friday’s demonstration on the streets of Port of Spain did not have the participation of half of the Unions in the country but the representative thousands who marched were the catalyst which transformed the CPO’s ‘games-playing’ into the serious business that settled the main issues in the salary negotiations with the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association.

Much to the dismay of some politicians and their Media mouth pieces, workers came from everywhere – the Fire Services, civil Aviation, Prison Services, NIB, Standards Bureau, C DA, WASA, TSTT, CARIRI, CPI, MTS, PTSC, Lever Brothers, Wallerfield Farmers, Estate Police, TCL, Power Generation, Trinmar, T & TEC, the Teaching Service, Petrotrin, Hilton Trinidad, UWI, the Health Sector, Yara, Port Authority.  They did not constitute the largest gathering of workers that Port of Spain had ever seen, but the representative thousands demonstrated the potential strength of the Trade Union Movement as we repudiated the unjust and immoral interference by the Public Sector Negotiating Committee in the Collective Bargaining Process and as we demanded Peace, Bread, Justice and Equity for all workers and less fortunate in society.  The representative thousands who demonstrated impacted the deliberations between the CPO and TUTTA and demanded that all negotiations be settled before General Elections.  The true representatives of the country’s workers were not making joke nor were they about party politics when they indicated a determination to bring all activity to a standstill in our pursuit of Peace, Bread, Justice and Equity to all.

The representative thousands whom some “media crackpot” counted as a few hundreds understand well our oft repeated warning that those who refuse to be moved by the strength of our argument will be forced by the strength of our numbers – some day – soon we shall overcome!  Representatives of thirteen (13) Unions and NGO’s made up the estimated five thousand workers and activists who marched last Friday also in their positive response to the OWTU President General’s initiative to unite the separate elements of the Trade Union and Labour Movement in T & T – an initiative which seeks to move the Unity Agenda from sterile and recriminatory talk to united action and solidarity.

All Unions are asked to keep the pressure on for the settlement of all outstanding negotiations before General Elections.  Let the Vampires know that workers are voters too.  And we are not giving up until they settle.  We demand Peace, Bread, Justice and Equity – Now!

Have a good evening! Be safe!

I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!

OWTU SPEAKS 2007 09 28

Good evening fellow citizens, comrades and friends – welcome to the OWTU Speaks!  Some call it ‘bacchanal’, others say ‘revolt’ and the emperor frowns.  It is curious but it is becoming clearer and clearer all the time!  -  Those who hold power and consider themselves anointed Kings – monarchs of all they survey – have always condemned protests, however popular the protests, however fundamental the cause – their ‘subjects’ must obey unquestioningly.

If asked to respond, we will speak only in the context of our own development and experiences, without meddling deliberately, in the private internal affairs of that organization whose Governor arrogates unto himself, the right to pick officials for public service and superintendency over national affairs.  We would say that protests’ – disciplined mass action – have been a pillar of the democratic tradition of many around the world who favour social equality and repudiate authoritarianism.  And he who won’t tolerate protests brought about by his own commissions or omissions will only meet more protests and indeed, provoke a people to revolt.

The accredited doctor who founded and built the organization had at one time not favoured the selection of some five or six representatives whom he called millstones and whom he knew he could disqualify by his own political savvy, vast knowledge and philosophical depth, and stature among men.  But he was a true true doctor whose accreditation was achieved by examination and who did not have to try too hard to be recognized above his diminutive physical being.  And above all, that political organisation’s founder really subscribed to favouring social equality and tried to understand the reasons for protests and had invariably moved to ameliorate them.  His subscription to democracy saw him bowing to the popular demands of his constituency groups and so endured the pain of the millstones around his neck and grew taller among his following.

Not so with doctor honoris causa!  The emperor expects all to say ‘hail his highness’ even as he loses his clothes.  What an arrogant exposition of unknowing – what a puerile sense of the unpolitical!  We are in serious crisis!

The campaign to capture a constitutional majority at the November 5 General elections – now that it has been announced will take on a frenzy.  The electorate of T & T will do itself great harm and that our sometimes envied democratic traditions, if it were to fall for the ole talk and hand to those contending for power, such a majority that would enable the first past the post to change the constitution to effect an Executive President.  It ought not to be allowed.