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For Immediate Release
NATUC RESPONDS TO THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
The Chamber of Commerce has no real basis for criticizing the Transport and Industrial Workers Union, over the Union’s characterization of contracting out of services of the MTS state owned Company as “a retrograde step” while the ADB loan which governs the nation’s schools’ service contracts speaks to awarding contracts through the public tender route, this tendering process was indeed flawed.
According to ILO Convention No. 94 – “Labour Clauses (Public Contracts) Convention”, appropriate measures should have been taken by the Government by advertising specifications to ensure that persons tendering for contracts were aware of the terms of clauses existing in the collective Agreement which exist between the MTS and the Transport and Industrial Workers Union.
Convention No. 94 states that the terms of the clauses in the commercial contract between MTS Company and private contractors shall be included after consultation with the organisation of employers and workers concerned. These contracts should include clauses ensuring for the workers concerned, wages (including allowances), hours of work and other conditions of labour which are not less favourable than those established for work of the same character in the trade or industry concerned where the work is carried out by Collective Agreement.
The real issue however, which the Chamber of Commerce is skirting is that the contracting out of services by the MTS state owned Company, is causing the retrenchment of numerous workers and that Trinidad and Tobago labour laws do not allow for succession to be granted to the Transport and Industrial Workers Union. TIWU should be allowed to continue to represent workers who will be performing the same services, in the same primary and secondary schools.
The Chamber of Commerce is not mindful of the fact that should the Union seek to re-organise these workers afresh, it would take an unreasonably lengthy period of time due to the archaic bureaucracy established at the Registration, Recognition and Certification Board.
Vincent
Cabrera
General
Secretary
July 28, 2004