Click to view full size

A grow­ing cho­rus of trade union lead­ers is de­nounc­ing re­cent state­ments sug­gest­ing that on­ly po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned unions—or those that pur­sued lit­i­ga­tion—should ben­e­fit from im­proved wage of­fers, warn­ing that such a shift threat­ens to desta­bilise the coun­try’s long-stand­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions frame­work.

The back­lash was trig­gered by com­ments from Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and for­mer trade union­ist Clyde El­der, who im­plied that TSTT work­ers and oth­er groups may not be en­ti­tled to a pro­posed ten per cent in­crease be­cause their unions do not be­long to what he de­scribed as a “coali­tion of in­ter­est.”

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) was first to re­spond, ac­cus­ing El­der of push­ing a nar­ra­tive that un­der­mines labour in­de­pen­dence and risks con­vert­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing in­to a po­lit­i­cal­ly dri­ven ex­er­cise.