00:00Labor Minister Leroy Batiste piloted the retrenchment and several benefits amendment bill saying it is of profound social, economic and
00:10moral significance.
00:11It speaks directly to the lived realities of working people across Trinidad and Tobago, particularly those who have faced displacement
00:25through corporate restructuring, insolvency, receivership and financial collapse.
00:35Often without meaningful severance protection or timely legal recourse.
00:42The amendments are aimed to modernize the statutory framework, strengthen consultation and notice requirements, provide for payment of wages in
00:52lieu of notice, revise severance benefit rates and replace the term retrenchment with redundancy.
00:59Minister Batiste says the definition of retrenchment is too narrow and excludes corporate collapse.
01:06This bill broadens it to encompass insolvency, closure, receivership, sale of business, automation, economic contraction or forced merger.
01:22Supporting the amendments in principle, Opposition Senator Farris Al-Rawi raised one objection.
01:28Redundancy in the bill says it means the termination of the employment of a worker in whole or in part.
01:36Sticker problem, pin there.
01:39You cannot have a definition where you're proposing to dismiss somebody in part.
01:45I believe that that is merely a transcription error.
01:48On this point, he gained support from Independent Senator Courtney McNish, an IR practitioner and consultant.
01:56Mr. President, you can either terminate a contract of employment for a variety of reasons, or you can vary the
02:06terms of an existing contract.
02:09You can even amend responsibilities and objectives of a job role as expressing a job description, but you therefore cannot
02:21legally and practically terminate an employment contract in part.
02:28But Al-Rawi did not have the same support when he called on government as the largest employer to lead
02:35from the front and allow amendments to be retroactively applicable only to government employees from May 1st, 2025.
02:43He presented a calculation he did for one such state entity.
02:48If we make it retrospective to government employees or public bodies within the government state enterprises sector, not the public
02:58bodies within the meaning of the public procurement law, a narrower version.
03:04Mr. President, let me give you the total figure.
03:08If you had 323 contractors with 30 employees and they were working for five years, the government owes them $74
03:20million.
03:21Back on the Independent Bench, Senator McNish gave his full support, though he took issue with the open-endedness of
03:27the requirement that the Labour Minister be notified of certain occurrences.
03:31It reflected on several matters in which he was involved.
03:36It took the minister one year and four months to acknowledge a report of a breakdown in negotiations between an
03:45RMU and one of my clients.
03:47A year and four months.
03:50In another matter, Mr. President, it took the minister three years to exercise his discretion under Section 552 of the
04:03Industrial Relations Act to extend the time in which a report of a trade dispute may be made.
04:09He described this as unacceptable, proposing a defined time frame for response and acknowledgement by the Labour minister.
04:18Urvashi Tuwari Rupnarain, TV6 News.
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