By Hugo Maynard
If there is a worse way to conduct wage talks than from the afterglow of an executive retreat in Tobago, TSTT has not yet discovered it. Nothing says “we value our staff” quite like a bacchanal over hotel bills while the people who keep the company alive are being told to make be happy with less.
According to today’s Guardian, the Communication Workers’ Union says TSTT was invoiced $436,081.78 for a three-day executive retreat in Tobago from January 16 to 18 involving acting chief executive officer Keino Cox and 10 executives. The reported invoices included more than $203,000 for event production, $72,000 for accommodation and $38,000 for branded items. CWU secretary general Joanne Ogeer has also called on Public Utilities Minister Clyde Elder to intervene.
Now place that beside what workers are hearing. Ogeer says the company’s latest offer is a one-time $15,000 payment with no increases in salaries, pensions, allowances or cost-of-living adjustments, even though employees are still operating on 2019 salary levels and negotiations span 2020-2022 and 2023-2025. She also says some facilities have gone without air-conditioning for extended periods, morale has fallen sharply, and some workers are now doing the jobs of multiple people.
That is the real scandal here. Not just the size of the expenditure, but the symbolism of it. In Trinidad, austerity always seems to arrive dressed for the workers and never for the boardroom. Sacrifice catches a taxi. Comfort gets a travel allowance.
To be fair, TSTT has pushed back. The company says no payment had been made at the time of the inquiry, that the public figure was overstated by approximately 60 per cent, and that the retreat was purpose-driven, involving strategic planning, leadership alignment, operational discussions, meetings with the Tobago House of Assembly and public engagement activities. It also argued Tobago was chosen instead of places like New York or London to manage costs and reduce foreign exchange spending. Why not Salybia or Mayaro, many are asking?
But crucially, it did not provide a full public breakdown of the expenses. A public utility cannot operate a shadow ledger. If the union’s math is fiction, TSTT needs to publish the nonfiction. A company cannot demand trust from workers and taxpayers while treating transparency like an optional add-on.
Elder, a former trade unionist, now finds himself in that uncomfortable place where memory is supposed to meet responsibility. Ogeer says the minister has not reached out to the union since taking office. Silence, in politics, is never neutral. It always sounds like somebody chose a side.
The country would accept a hard truth honestly told. Tell workers the company is under strain. Open the books. Cut frills from the top before preaching restraint to the bottom. Spread the pain fairly and people may still be angry, but they will understand. What they will not accept is the old local formula: executive privilege upstairs, stale excuses downstairs.
TSTT’s problem today is not only whether the retreat cost too much. Its bigger problem is that the retreat now looks like a postcard from a management culture badly out of touch with the temper of the times. When workers are sweating in buildings without air-conditioning and being told a zero increase for their labour over the years is reasonable, even a “purpose-driven” retreat begins to look less like leadership and more like a lime-with-minute-notes.
