MOVEMENT for Social Justice (MSJ) leader David Abdulah lamented three quarters (75 per cent) of workers in Trinidad and Tobago do not belong to a trade union, speaking to reporters on June 5 at a briefing in Woodford Square, Port of Spain.
He was joined by Oifield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) officials Sati Gajadhar-Inniss (first vice president) and Ozzie Warwick (general secretary) to launch a campaign to encourage people to join trade unions in protection of their rights, in the lead-up to Labour Day on June 19.
The trio later distributed leaflets to people on Frederick Street explaining their rights to a minimum wage, national insurance, maternity protection, occupational health and safety and retrenchment and severance benefits.
Abdulah gave reporters figures which indicated trade union membership has plummeted over the years from about 65 per cent to 25 per cent of the workforce.
"When I joined the trade union movement, way back in 1977, it was 65-70 per cent of the labour force was unionised. That has flipped in the last 40-odd years
"It is not peculiar to TT. This is a global thing, as a result of neoliberal, capitalist economic policies, designed to weaken the trade union movement and weaken workers' power, to enable capital to accumulate more and more wealth for the one per cent."
Abdulah said a recent study showed an average US worker would take 200 years to earn their CEO's yearly salary. He said CEOs in some state companies in TT earn $80,000 or $90,000 per month, plus perks such as car and housing. He calculated that someone on the minimum wage in TT would take two years to earn what a CEO earns in a month.
"That is the level of inequity in society.
"The drive to get rid of unions has resulted in more inequality. Those societies that have high rates of unionisation tend to have less income inequality."
He blamed the current state of affairs on structural readjustment since the 1980s, even as he recalled DEWD – forerunner of URP – had been unionised (represented by NUGFW). Abdulah said grass-cutting in public spaces used to be done by unionised workers in municipal corporations but nowadays is done by non-unionised workers in private companies contracted by CEPEP.
Abdulah said the decline in union membership was also worsened by major retrenchments, namely the defunct Petrotrin and Arcelor-Mittal, plus TSTT, and energy-sector service companies are no longer unionised.
"The setting-up of special-purpose companies like the Educational Facilities Company Ltd, all of those have resulted in a shift.
"Then the multiplicity now of service employment – which essentially is low-skilled, relatively low-paid work – are the sectors that have been growing: security, fast foods, casinos, malls. All of those have expanded in the last 25-30 years."
Abdulah said previously workers had good, decent jobs at manufacturing companies like Unilever, which had since shut.
"There has been a shift in the structure of the labour force, which is not good."
He said entities like malls generate employme
