The OWTU condemns outright in the strongest possible terms the unprovoked and calculated attack aimed at our union, its membership and all working people in Trinidad and Tobago by Anthony Sabga.
We consider his remarks as a declaration of war on the entire trade union movement.
We find it passing strange for Mr Sabga to make that statement coming on the heels of a failed State of Emergency which further exacerbated an already stalled economy and resulted in billions of dollars of losses to our country while maintaining a deafening silence. To accuse trade unions of wanting to destabilise the country goes beyond the highest level of hypocrisy.
The OWTU noted carefully that Mr Sabga’s only concern is the threat to entrepreneurship, when clearly the conditions of social inequity, injustice, abuse of power and authority and corruption at the level of the business community in collusion with their friends in the government are the real reasons for instability in the country.
He and his associates would do better to focus their attention on the daily exploitation of workers. These workers daily suffer in silence in conditions liken to modern day slavery. This occurs while employers hide behind the inadequacy of the law amassing great wealth at the expense of the said workers.
We immediately dismiss his outdated and the regularly peddled plantation view that workers taking action in their own interest in the face of heightened exploitation by their employers is outdated.
Indeed, in the face of the current global economic crisis not created by them we see workers led by their unions in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, France, the United States and recently, the United Kingdom taking mass action including national strikes.
We firmly believe these workers were correct in not staying silent as their governments attempted to impose austerity measures to continue to prop up the financial system which collapsed as a result of capitalist greed.
Today we ask the question, where was Mr Sabga’s voice in the CLICO debacle? This obscene display of greed had threatened the collapse of our entire economy. That was not trade unions’ doing.
The OWTU call on workers throughout the length and breadth of Trinidad and Tobago to join us in a colossal dismissal and condemnation of Anthony Sabga’s anti-worker statement.
Recognising that workers are awakening and ready to demonstrate real workers’ power in their own class interest, it is he and his colleagues who are the ones that are becoming desperate.
Nevertheless, we in the trade union movement will be fearlessly intensifying our campaign to realise social justice and equity in the society and will do all that is necessary to achieve this noble objective even if it means shutting down the country.
(Source http://www.trinidadexpress.com/letters/Strange_attack_on_workers-135556993.html)
