Trade union lead­ers are crit­i­cis­ing what they de­scribe as the si­lence of some labour or­gan­i­sa­tions fol­low­ing re­ports of near­ly 6,000 job loss­es in the first quar­ter of 2026. They are al­so call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide as­sur­ances to work­ers amid un­cer­tain­ty over the fu­ture of Hilton Trinidad.

The lat­est Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) Labour Force Sur­vey showed em­ploy­ment de­clined by 5,900 be­tween the fourth quar­ter of 2025 and the first quar­ter of 2026.

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette and Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) pres­i­dent Don De­venish said trade unions have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­de­pen­dent­ly as­sess gov­ern­ment poli­cies and speak out on is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers.