The Union of Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Personnel (UTASP) was formed in 1967 and could be considered as the offshoot of the Port Supervisor Union (PSU) formed two years earlier. The Port workers complained daily about the working conditions and low wage at the wharves. There was an acquaintant of Mr. Reginald Ennis (Reg) that had a case with the management of the port and ‘Reg’ (he was popularly called) decided to help him. He took the case to the Ministry of Labour (IDT) with help from his friend, young lawyer, Percival Noel James Patterson (PJ), they won.

The case was highly publicized and the workers from the three wharves including the port wanted to get representation. The outcome made Reg and a team started to organized all the workers at all the wharves into a union, they named it the Port Supervisor Union (PSU). The management was very much against the workers organizing themselves, and opposed any form of union meetings on the wharves. Reg was also prevented from coming onto the port and wharves by management. The meetings had to be held in secret. After six months of struggle, the PSU won the bargaining rights poll in December of 1965 to represent the workers.

The success of the poll made other category of port worker groups wanted to join the PSU, including the Pilot group which are a special group of port workers. To get a group like the pilots to join was very difficult, the team had stronger resistance from the management. The team had to deploy all manner of tactics and negotiations to win the bargaining rights on behalf of the Pilot group.

The experience gained in creating the PSU, lead the team to look broader at workers in other sector. They started to look at the ‘white collar’ workers. These are the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory workers that at the time had no representation. It was also believed that these group of workers would not want union representation and that Reg and his team was wasting their time. They traveled the length and breadth of the island talking with these workers. The Jamaica Public Service (JPS) ‘white collar’ workers were the first to come on board. They represented at the time the largest sector group of workers UTASP had to represent in its first year of operation.

Although unions were for a long time apart of the industrial relations landscape, legal unions like Jamaica Civil Services Association (JCSA), the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) and National Workers Union (NWU), and UTASP had numerous struggles to secure bargaining rights on behalf of workers and on many occasions had to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Currently UTASP represents various categories of workers in both the public and private sectors which is lead now by St. Patrice Ennis who is a Vice Presedent of the Jamaica Conference of Trade Union and a member of the Minimum Wage Advisory Commission.