It certainly is not everything about which labour shouts that the business community will listen to or concur with.
However, there are some issues in the workplace, about which there cannot be any compromise at all, for this may also result in violation of the law.
Two of such issues are safety in the workplace and the preservation of life and limb.
Like the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU), the Chamber joins in condemning the shooting of St Servius Pamphille, a meter reader in the employ of the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) who was performing his job at Brunton Trace, Mt Hope, and who has lost a part of his liver and one of his kidneys in the attack.
According to Ancel Roget, president of the OWTU, the exposure of its members and other employees of T&TEC to becoming victims of crime as they do their jobs, did not begin with the serious bodily harm inflicted on Mr Pamphille.
There have been similar occurrences previously.
The dissatisfied president warns that if the Commission cannot, or will not, ensure the safety, health and welfare at work of all its employees, they may refuse to work or do particular work.
What Mr Roget intends, is that ’if there is no safety for T&TEC workers, no electricity for anyone’.
’It’s as straightforward as that,’ he proclaims.
The Chamber does not share this view.
While section 15 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, 2004, empowers workers to refuse to work or do particular work, it is conditional on the employee having reason to believe that there is serious and imminent danger to himself or others or unusual circumstances have arisen which are hazardous or injurious to health or life.
The risk of reading meters at Brunton Trace, is certainly not the position nationwide, as Mr Roget himself admits, in voicing support for workers who perceive their lives to be at risk ’in any hot-spot area’.
As far as the Chamber is aware, all of the country is not a ’hot spot’ and any attempt to broad brush it as such, the ultimate objective being to refuse to respond to all emergency calls, is irresponsible and a manipulation of OSHA.
However, the Chamber is sympathetic to the legitimate concerns of T&TEC’s employees and their union and the reality of the risks of becoming victims of crime, while on the job.
In fact, for quite some time now, many of the Chamber’s own members engaged in the retail trade have had to incur tremendous additional costs in employing armed security guards to accompany deliveries, install vaults on delivery trucks in order to defend its employees and property against criminal elements and avoid the collection of cash.
Only recently, our Crime and Justice Committee, in response to the continuing increase in larceny, robbery, hijacking, injuries and death in this sector, introduced the wireless point of sale and payment system and GPS for the purpose of reliably tracking delivery fleets.
From T&TEC’s perspective, now that it has given an undertaking of safety in the work place, it must follow private enterprise and take steps to protect its workforce.
But what will ultimately be the additional cost to the consumer?
Today, it is T&TEC, but what about the probability of similar risk to employees of TSTT, WASA, TTPost and our garbage collectors, all of whom can relate to the horrible circumstances in which Mr Pamphille found himself while doing his job at Mt Hope.
Whatever the solution, be it providing bulletproof vests, arming employees in hot spot areas or contracting or outsourcing security, it will spell additional operational costs.
Furthermore, the wide scale effect all of this is likely to have on demands, not only by public sector trade unions, but those in the private sector, in addition to what is already expended on security, is bound to negatively impact on the final price of goods and services to consumers and, ultimately, on the rate of inflation.
The Chamber shares Mr Roget’s view that crime and violence in the country has gotten out of control, but we distance ourselves from his intention to capitalize on the injury to Mr Pamphille by intimidating the entire country and threatening the lives and property of its citizenry by disrupting the supply of electricity or not responding to emergency calls nationwide.
This is simply blowing hot and cold.
For the sake of peace in the country and safety in the workplace, the Chamber calls on Mr Philbert and his ranks to do whatever is necessary to apprehend the criminals who placed the life of St Servius Pamphille in danger.
Crime has now formally entered the portals of safety in the workplace, threatening T&TEC’s and other essential services’ compliance with OSHA, impacting upon the collective bargaining process and cost of living across the board.
The Minister of National Security needs to make available to Mr Philbert immediately, the resources, whether patrols or escorts to workers in hot spot areas or whatever, to address this latest victimisation of the labour sector, as criminal elements continue to gain the upper hand.
To Mr Roget, we counsel balance and ask for good sense to prevail as two wrongs don’t make a right. In your anxiety to rely on OSHA to advance the cause of your members, please observe the letter of that law, especially the provisions of sections 16-19 thereof, which are preconditions for refusal to work or do particular work, in circumstances such as those in which St Servius Pamphille found himself on that fateful day.
