WHAT ROGET LEARNT THE HARD WAY

ANCEL ROGET is a poor student of labour history.

Clearly, the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) leader knows little – and cares even less – about a PNM administration authorising blows upon workers and wrecking a protest in March 1975, in what has since been labelled “Bloody Tuesday.”

Roget must be unaware of the oppression, including imprisonment, inflicted by first Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams on his union under the leadership of the radical George Weekes.

Weekes waged a relentless campaign, including strikes and public demonstrations, to extract better working conditions.

He undertook a crusade to drive exploitative multinationals from the energy sector and to give workers control of “the commanding heights of the economy.”

In keeping with the PNM’s well-known tactic of divide-and-rule, the labour sector was for years exploited and segregated, leading to two major factions.

The Government-leaning bloc was made up of Seamen and Waterfront Workers’ Trade Union (SWWTU), Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), National Union of Government and Federated Workers (NUGFW) and other amenable bodies.

Submissive labour leaders, like Carl Tull, Nathaniel Crichlow, and Vernon Glean, were placed in the Senate – as PNM representatives, no less.

Roget is probably unaware of the historic strike by bus workers in the 1960s after the PNM administration of the day refused workers’ demands.

Transport and Industrial Workers’ Union (TIWU), the workers’ representative, was also demanding a revision of the repressive Industrial Stabilisation Act (ISA).

Workers branded it Is Slavery Again.

A decade later, the Government introduced the Industrial Relations Act (IRA), which was only marginally less controlling and which remains in the law books today.

Roget undoubtedly has little knowledge of struggles against Williams in the sugar belt to secure more than the mere few cents a day and to end child labour.

He most likely does not recall the PNM’s opposition to tripartite discussions, meaning purposeful talks among Government, labour and employers.

It may have slipped him that there have not been any adjustments to the minimum wage in spite of the escalating cost of living.

More than anything else, he is probably ignorant of the singular role OWTU has played since its formation in 1937 for social and economic justice, with the blue-shirt army being a revolutionary force.

Much of that crusade has been during PNM rule, and especially through the tenure of the hard-line Williams, who was seen as anti-worker.

So, when Roget and other labour minions embraced and supported the Dr. Keith Rowley-led PNM in 2015, it was inevitably going to end badly.

As expected, the PNM boss maximised labour’s electoral backing, and then gently weaned himself off the working-class representatives.

Rowley was keeping the PNM true to form.

The last eight years of PNM rule have yielded nothing for workers and farmers, including the informal sector and single mothers.

In fact, they have gotten poorer, with crises in their health, housing and overall welfare.

Roget has now disentangled himself and his colleagues from the clutches of a political party and Government that has never prioritised workers.

He learnt the hard way.