Local companies seeking new industrial arrangements

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Local companies seeking new industrial arrangements

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Details: Parent Category: Oct 2011; Category: Week ending Oct 29th, 2011; Hits: 303

Firebrand trade unionist, Senator Chester Humphrey has expressed fears that some local companies are trying to change the landscape by seeking to introduce a new range of benefits for workers from what previously existed in negotiations for a new industrial contract.

Sen. Humphrey made the statement while updating the media on a series of negotiations involving the Grenada Technical and Allied Workers Union (TAWU) and some business companies on the island.

The President General of TAWU charged that some companies are seeking to have overtime and different allowances taken out of the contract for workers.

He described the new thinking as an assault on collective agreements with a view to weakening the collective agreement approach.

“It puts an enormous burden on negotiating teams, because negotiations which could easily be wrapped up in three or four sessions now mean you have as much as ten sessions before you can even come close to concluding,” he said.

Sen. Humphrey made specific reference to negotiations taking place between TAWU and St. George’s University (SGU) on a new collective package to cover the period January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2013.

The matters that are being considered relate to the probationary period, hours of work, maternity leave, rates of pay, nights differential hours adjustment, retirement and pension, and health insurance.

According to Sen. Humphrey, SGU is requesting a comprehensive review of the existing agreement.

“I would describe those negotiations as painstaking, but cordial,” he said.

TAWU is also conducting negotiations with the state-owned Gravel Concrete and Emulsion Corporation, which like SGU, has reportedly called for a complete review of the existing agreement.

“Several other work places have taken that approach,” said Sen. Humphrey who described the current industrial climate on the island as being very tentative.

He noted while there is growing discontent and increases in prices of commodity goods, wages of workers are not moving upward.

Sen. Humphrey believes that the situation in Grenada is being compounded by the number of persons who are losing their homes due to problems in serving their mortgages.

He spoke of looking at a 24-page newspaper and discovered that almost 20 pages had foreclosure notices.

The trade union leader accused the three-year old National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of Prime Minister Tillman Thomas of not having any adequate plan in place to deal with the current situation.

He stressed that the emphasis now should be on jobs, but he has heard no job-creating plan.

Sen. Humphrey felt that “the errors made by the government with the Kuwaiti-based Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC)” is compounding the situation.

“If CCC was here we would have had at least six hundred jobs - three hundred direct jobs and three hundred indirect jobs,” he said.

Government and CCC were at loggerheads over the preliminary costs for work to be done on 16 farm roads at a cost of $54 million.

As a result the project was retendered and recently it was announced that eight contractors including CCC have been short-listed.

At his Town Hall Meeting last month, Prime Minister Thomas announced that the invitation to tender would be issued this month, and anticipates that the project will commence in the first half of 2012.