Who is popular today?

THE EDITOR: I read Corey Connelly's news story on Tuesday headed "Trade union leaders to workers: It is time to unite to fight" – three times. Unite to fight whom? The weary TT taxpayers or just a wide fraction of the 80,000 members of the Public Services Association who may balk at possibly funding the political dreams of the six new Tobago House of Assembly (THA) assemblymen?
Why should union leaders talk about reporting the Government to the Industrial Labour Organization (ILO)? The Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM), the National Trade Union Centre (Natuc), and the Federation of Independent Trade Unions (Fitun) have collectively accused the Government of a relentless campaign to retrench the workers of this country. Is the so-named motorcade, Unite to Fight, held in Tobago this past Sunday an excuse to play at the politics of divide and rule?
The leader of Natuc, Watson Duke, said: “We have come to call for a new election to give whoever presents themselves to serve the people of Trinidad and Tobago a new mandate. We are clear, they are beyond redemption. They are beyond conversation. They are beyond licks.”
Can our labour leaders view themselves as political game changers? The next general election is due in 2025.
Our unions are against retrenchment in any shape or form. This ruinous attitude has overplayed itself for many a year. They refuse to move into the reality that says the days of adding workers to state entities, whether needed or not, are long gone. Regrettably, the pandemic has compounded the global decimation of trade unions.
It is my personal, unsolicited view that the obscenity of what has occurred at the Water and Sewage Authority (WASA) is so shameful that officials at the ILO headquarters would cringe with embarrassment. The unions blame it on bad management. Did some people collude with labour leaders until neither could see beyond their own noses?
I would like the ILO to give an opinion on the information that is in the public domain about the scandal at WASA. The impossible union promise to the TT workforce is lifelong employment without retrenchment.
Which right-thinking educated person believes employment for life is achievable in this 21st century that is bedevilled by a pandemic?

LYNETTE JOSEPH

Diego Martin
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