PSA president wants answers on who will represent TTRA

Senior Reporter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Now that the Privy Council has given the green light for the full implementation of the Trinidad and Tobago Revenue Authority (TTRA), one of the concerns raised is who will be the recognised union to represent the workers.

The TTRA will be an amalgamation of the Board of Inland Revenue and the Customs and Excise Division and will impact some 2,175 workers, according Public Services Association (PSA) president Leroy Baptiste.

Baptiste has been clamouring for answers from Chief Personnel Officer Dr Daryl Dindial and Minister of Finance Colm Imbert, about the terms and conditions the workers who decide to switch to the TTRA will be subjected to. He said there were questions that need answers before the workers took the leap to join the TTRA and be without the proper representation.

Baptiste likened the move to “virtual slavery,” where he said workers were being made to “just do what the bosses say.”

He said, “Part and parcel of the Government objective in virtually every restructuring exercise they have embarked upon is to dismantle bargaining units, therefore creating an environment where there are non-unionised workers. And the same is true of TTRA, so the workers who enter there will not have the right to collective bargaining.”

Baptiste’s claim of an environment of non-unionised workers was supported by industrial relations specialist Courtney Mc Nish, who referenced the reshuffling of Petrotrin to Heritage Petroleum and Paria Fuel Trading Company, where the workers once represented by the Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) were now unrepresented.

He added, however, that there were also examples of restructuring where the workers were not impacted and the unions remained. One of these included the shift of the Health Ministry workers to the regional health authorities, where the workers are still represented by the PSA.

Mc Nish said this is not the first time something of this nature has happened in the country and raised the ongoing amalgamation of State-run trade organisations, ExporTT, InvesTT and CreativeTT to form the Trinidad and Tobago Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (TTIPA).

Meanwhile, former PSA president and former minister of labour Jennifer Baptiste-Primus said the current executive should focus on meeting with the CPO to get more time for workers to indicate their positions regarding the TTRA.

The workers had up to July 31 to either join the TTRA, accept voluntary separation packages or be transferred to another state agency.

Last month, acting CPO Wendy Barton met with Baptiste virtually to discuss the issue, but the meeting ended with the CPO office needing questions answered from the Ministry of Finance.

In a WhatsApp response to Guardian Media then Dindial said both parties, as well as the Service Commission Department, are now waiting on data from the Ministry of Finance to both advance and address issues that PSA’s membership had with the move.

Calls and messages to both Dindial and Imbert yesterday went unanswered.

In July, before the deadline, acting Finance Minister Allyson West said 60 per cent of some 1,200 workers did not submit their response. She added that of the remaining 40 per cent, the majority agreed to join the TTRA.

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