Unions: Threats won’t fix public service productivity

Trade union lead­ers have pushed back against the Gov­ern­ment’s threat to dis­miss un­pro­duc­tive pub­lic ser­vants, ar­gu­ing that work­ers can­not be held sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for poor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty when many lack the tools, equip­ment and sup­port need­ed to per­form their du­ties.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of pro­mot­ing a cul­ture of in­tim­i­da­tion, while Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Christo­pher Streete said em­ploy­ees could not be ex­pect­ed to work ef­fi­cient­ly with­out the nec­es­sary tools and equip­ment.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevon Ashe al­so cau­tioned em­ploy­ers against blam­ing work­ers for poor per­for­mance when they were not pro­vid­ed with the re­sources need­ed to car­ry out their du­ties.