—What of ‘sick-outs’ and theatrics?
Analysis
WITH the Carnival over and as revelry gives way to the sober season of Lent, it is being hoped that good sense will trump emotionalism for a speedy resolution to the protracted pay-hike dispute involving the Trinidad and Tobago Government and public sector workers, including the police.

The rest of Caribbean Community member states have been left to follow developments of police ‘sick-outs’ and varied protest actions by the union representing public service employees, even as meetings and negotiation processes were continuing.

There is the expectation of a likely response this Ash Wednesday, or not later than tomorrow, by the Public Service Association (PSA) to the latest pre-carnival position on the union’s demands with a flexibility that could range between one and two percent beyond an originally stated offer by the government of a five percent across-the-board increase..
This could also apply to the police service which had started out with a whopping forty percent pay hike demand, in contrast to the government’s declared position in favour of a general five percent  over a three-year period.
The trade union movement in Trinidad and Tobago has long set plausible examples with matured responses in dealing with industrial relation disputes, even when its militancy proved quite challenging for successive governments in Port-of-Spain.
In the current scenario the PSA, which is linked to the regional  body representing affiliated national associations, would be mindful of how it pursues pay hike demands to reflect the realities at home and in other CARICOM jurisdictions.
Likewise, the Police Services Association would wish to be mindful that its own demands reflect some semblance to national/regional realities, particularly at a period of sweeping, dramatic political developments in the Middle East and North Africa that could have a negative impact even on an energy-based economy like Trinidad and Tobago’s.
It would also be conscious of the challenges facing the police services across this region from frightening levels of criminality, and the anxieties of citizens for a law and order environment that requires firm commitment by those who have solemnly sworn to “serve and protect” and whose loyalty to service to the nation should also be appropriately rewarded.
When, however, members of police services resort to industrial action, under the guise of a ‘sick out’, it is quite a challenge for any society committed to ensuring law and order.
Indeed, it is a very rare “right”—if such a “right’ it is—to have been exercised even when a general shutdown of services has been authorized, in extraordinary circumstances, by an umbrella body representing affiliated unions.
When last, for instance, were there such incidents of “police sick outs” under any previous government in Port-of-Spain and for what duration? In the current scenario, as I understand it, there remain lingering doubts that the recent spate of “sickouts” had been appropriately endorsed by the body representing the police–the PSA.
So far as the Public Service Association is concerned, its President, Watson Duke, whose rise to its leadership last year at a time of internal division–seems to delight in projecting a personal militant image, with a mixture of theatrics. That’s okay, especially if it is a leadership style embraced by the general rank and file membership.
For example, would the PSA membership have endorsed Duke’s threatening, if amusing, behaviour  when he showed up, with some one hundred public service workers in a mood of defiance last Thursday at the ultra-modern Hyatt Regency Hotel to give orders, through a bullhorn, to the consternation of guests and workers of the hotel?
What message in “leadership” Duke figured he was sending, not just to his own union, where his popularity is reported to be limited—but to other established and respected unions representing workers of the country?
By no stretch of the imagination could the PSA President’s behaviour at the Hyatt Regency—where his menu ‘orders’ even included, hilariously, suggestion for a “barbecued cow”. Could that behaviour be reasonably associated with the union’s salary dispute with the government of the day?
Put that incident down to a then prevailing carnival mood and he may still discover, from a secret ballot, how disappointed his own membership may be. Is President Duke anxious for a police arrest?
Question of immediate relevance, now that the carnival is over and negotiations between the government and the unions (both for public servants and police) are to resume, is whether Trinidad and Tobago now heading for more of  the same with police “sick outs” and political theatrics? Or are both government and workers representatives about to come up with an enlightened compromise—in the national interest?