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The Industrial Court, on St Vincent Street, Port of Spain. File photo/Jeff K Mayers

A week after five unions had their negotiations brought before the Industrial Court after a breakdown, the Amalgamated Workers Union (AWU) has signed off on a 14 per cent wage increase for two periods.

At the Ministry of Labour, Duke Street, Port of Spain, on Tuesday, AWU officials signed an agreement with Bermudez Biscuit Company, a subsidiary of the Bermudez Group Ltd.

The group comprises Kiss Baking Company, Bermudez, Holiday Foods, Wibisco, Excelsior and Soldanza.

The settlement is for two three-year bargaining periods, 2018-2021 and 2021-2024. The first period was settled for eight per cent and the second for six per cent.

While the agreement is for the Bermudez Biscuit Company, only daily, weekly and hourly paid workers will benefit from the agreement, as they are unionised. Those affected include warehouse attendants, sanitation workers and machine operators totalling between 250 and 300 employees.

The union, which agreed to the government’s four per cent wage increase for sanitation workers at the Port of Spain City Corporation in August for the period 2014-2016 and 2017-2019, was chastised by other unions for accepting what they considered a low offer.

That four per cent rejection caused Finance Minister Colm Imbert to refer the negotiations to the Industrial Court. The five unions before the court are: Fire Service Association, Prison Officers Association, Police Social and Welfare Association , Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) and the National Union of Government & Federated Workers (NUGFW).

Asked about this at Tuesday’s signing, general secretary for the AWU Cassandra Tommy-Dabreo said the signing is a win for the union, although it is far less than for previous periods. For the period 2025-2018 the union agreed to a 15 per cent wage increase and the previous period was 19 per cent.

“How I feel about it? It is a plus for me, and I would personalise it, aAs a female general secretary in the trade union movement that is dominated by male,and especially tall strapping males.

“So the fact of the matter is, it is a plus. Yes, we would have wanted more, but I will take from my comrade that we still have the glass, and we still have the glass on hand and going forward, we will always want the glass to be filled.”

While workers expressed disappointment in the continued drop from 19 to six per cent in a bargaining period, Tommy-Dabreo said they understood the economic times facing the country and accepted the overall 14 per cent.

The union submitted a proposal for the return of cost of living allowances (COLA), profit sharing and heat allowances, but those were not agreed to.

Group industrial relations manager Hashim Al-Mujaahid said the agreement was to bring the biscuit company in alignment with the other companies regarding salaries. He said the increased salary and backpay will be paid to employees on or before the end of the year and will not be part of the company’s Christmas bonus, if the companies decided to grant them.

Asked about the settlement for the other companies, Al-Mujaahid said he did not want to pre-empt any ongoing or future discussions and therefore did not want to comment. He emphasised that the reason the settlement was arrived at was to putthe biscuit company on par with the other companies. He said there is a thrust to give annual increases to the workers not represented by a bargaining union.

“If you look at the spread over the six-year period, most of the employees throughout the group would have gotten, from 2018 to now, an 11 per cent increase.

“So let’s just say somebody found that Bermudez get plenty. When they do the maths, they will realize that they actually got more than Bermudez as of today’s date.

“So usually, that’s how we try to make sure there’s equity across the board, that everybody wouldn’t get the same thing. The standard of the group is to make sure that there’s equity.”

He said the three per cent difference must not be viewed in a vacuum, as the pandemic and the cost of wheat increasing globally also factored into the decision to settle on the amount.

Both the union and Al-Mujaahid thanked Bridget Ignatius, senior conciliator at the Conciliation, Advisory and Advocacy Division at the Ministry of Labour, for assisting in settling the negotiations, which broke down after they began in 2018.

The union said its position moved from 40 to 23 per cent before negotiations broke down and the company moved from zero to four per cent for the first bargaining period.

Negotiations resumed in June through conciliation.

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Sports

File photo: West Indies batting legend Brian Lara.

A three-member panel of independent professionals has been named by Cricket West Indies (CWI) to conduct a comprehensive review of the early exit by the West Indies from the recent ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in Australia.

CWI on Wednesday announced that the three-member panel will undertake a holistic assessment of all aspects of the team’s preparation and performance at the global tournament.

The panel includes: West Indies batting legend and IPL head coach, Brian Lara; international cricket coach and South African Mickey Arthur; and Justice Patrick Thompson Jr, a High Court Judge at the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court; who will serve as chair of the panel who have already begun their work.

The West Indies team failed to qualify for the main round of the tournament, after losing to lower-ranked Scotland and Ireland. The losses caused great disappointment and frustration among all West Indies cricket stakeholders.

The Group B qualifier round was played at Bellerive Oval in Tasmania where the team achieved their only victory over Zimbabwe, a team that qualified ahead of West Indies by defeating both Scotland and Ireland.

The panel will submit a report to the CWI board of directors, with relevant insight and clear recommendations. It is also intended that this review will establish a process and template for future performance reviews.

In commenting on the appointments, CWI president Ricky Skerritt said: “CWI is fortunate to have such a knowledgeable and totally independent panel agree to serve West Indies cricket under challenging circumstances. I am especially grateful for their commitment to lend some of their valuable time to this important review project.

“It is vital that players, coaches, administrators, and all of us who love West Indies cricket, recognise that creating a sustainable learning culture, throughout the organisation, is a prerequisite for player growth and team improvement.

Emotion-based and knee-jerk type decisions have failed CWI repeatedly in the past. I am confident that this independent World Cup review process will produce findings and learnings that should be of great benefit to our cricket system going forward.”

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According to Richard Simms, the Director of the Department of Environmental Health (DEH), each week, the DEH uses its incinerator to burn thousands of pounds of materials, including medical waste, narcotics and other seized goods.

When this happens twice per week (with each load being about 6,400 lbs), gases are released into our air.

Regarding what is specifically emitted, Mr Simms articulated that:

No emissions monitoring is possible on the exhaust gases from the current system. The incinerator has a two stage burn system with a primary chamber for the waste to be placed for incineration and a secondary chamber where the flue gases are further incinerated prior to emission from the stack. Typical gases released from these systems are in the majority combustion products such as carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide plus hydrogen chloride and other trace gases.

With respect to sulphur dioxide (SO?), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes SO? as “a colorless gas with a characteristic, irritating, pungent odor.”

Exposure to sulfur dioxide may cause irritation to the eyes, nose, and throat. Symptoms include: nasal mucus, choking, cough, and reflex bronchi constriction, and when liquid: frostbite- Workers may be harmed from exposure to sulfur dioxide. The level of exposure depends upon the dose, duration, and work being done.

The CDC added.

Regarding nitrogen dioxide, some guidance on this is provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

According to the EPA:

Breathing air with a high concentration of NO2 can irritate airways in the human respiratory system. Such exposures over short periods can aggravate respiratory diseases, particularly asthma, leading to respiratory symptoms (such as coughing, wheezing or difficulty breathing), hospital admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Longer exposures to elevated concentrations of NO2 may contribute to the development of asthma and potentially increase susceptibility to respiratory infections. People with asthma, as well as children and the elderly are generally at greater risk for the health effects of NO2.

With no emissions monitoring possible on the exhaust gases from the current system used by DEH, it is unclear how much SO?, NO? and other gases have been released into the atmosphere over the past decade and who (if anyone) could have been impacted.

Given these concerns, government officials may wish to consider whether it is now prudent to consider the implementation of a Clean Air Act, the purpose of such an Act being to enhance the health and safety of members of the public, to protect them from dangerous emissions and to make users of such incinerators legally accountable.

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