The Saint Lucia Civil Service Association (CSA) has levelled accusations of poaching against a fellow trade union – the NWU. Employees at WASCO who are represented by the CSA, participated in a decertification poll on Wednesday. The CSA has been in negotiations on behalf of WASCO employees for over a year and many of the workers say they are not satisfied with the pace or outcomes of negotiations. Mc Stephen Aubertin of the CSA said there seems to be no unity among trade unions but rather something he described as “trade union capitalism”. Aubertin said as fellow trade unions he would expect that if workers complain about the level of representation given by the CSA or any other union, the first thing a sister union should do is to contact the union in question and inform it about the concerns being expressed by its members. He said that when CSA has in the past come to represent members of another union, it did so after much discussion with the original union representing the workers. They say this is not the case with the current WASCO situation.
