Yvonne Webb

Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cel Ro­get re­spond­ed to no­tice of lock­out ac­tion from the Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) by burn­ing the doc­u­ment be­fore cheer­ing work­ers at the Clax­ton Bay strike camp yes­ter­day. As the work­ers beat tas­sa drums and cheered the ac­tion, Ro­get told them the com­pa­ny's re­sponse was a sign of weak­ness and des­per­a­tion, eight days in­to the 90-day strike ac­tion be­cause they could not guar­an­tee a re­li­able and con­tin­u­ous sup­ply of ce­ment on the mar­ket.

He al­so warned them of pro­longed ac­tion af­ter the end of the of­fi­cial strike, if the com­pa­ny dared to break the strike and in­sti­tute in­di­vid­ual con­tracts. He ac­cused the com­pa­ny of be­ing des­per­ate be­cause share­hold­ers were clam­our­ing for their heads. Ro­get told his mem­bers that in its wound­ed state, they should "kill the beast." "The en­e­my has ex­posed in a most de­ci­sive way, its weak­ness," he said.

"The en­e­my is weak, the en­e­my is on the ground, the en­e­my is about to die and I do not know any­body here would breathe life in­to the en­e­my for the en­e­my to come back. "When the en­e­my is wound­ed and on the ground and ready to die we must kill the beast," he told strik­ing work­ers yes­ter­day. Ro­get al­so said that the lock­out ac­tion, which could see the com­pa­ny ne­go­ti­at­ing in­di­vid­ual con­tracts with the work­ers, was a sign of in­com­pe­tence, by at­tempt­ing to shut the sta­ble doors af­ter the hors­es had bolt­ed.

"They are des­per­ate, be­cause share­hold­ers are clam­our­ing for their heads and I don't know any­one of the TCL work­ers would want to en­sure that they do any­thing to save the jobs of Bertrand (CEO Dr Rollins Bertrand), Bachew (GM Sat­nar­ine Bachew) and oth­ers," he said. "If they are do­ing non­sense to cause strike ac­tion, which strike ac­tion would cause them to ac­count at the end of the day, we will have a bonus in­side.

"I think we will not on­ly get our just set­tle­ment, but the bonus in that is that we are go­ing to get the heads of those who have been mis­man­ag­ing the com­pa­ny." He posed a di­rect ques­tion to his mem­ber­ship, ask­ing: "Is there any work­ers who feel that he should ac­cept an op­por­tu­ni­ty to scab and ac­cept an in­di­vid­ual con­tract?"

He was an­swered with a re­sound­ing "No." Ro­get ex­plained that it was the com­pa­ny's right in law, af­ter con­cil­ia­to­ry talks broke down at the Min­istry of Labour, to make such and of­fer. "But the fact that they did not ex­er­cise that right some eight days ago, and to come now, it is an ex­er­cise in com­plete fu­til­i­ty and fool­ish­ness and des­per­a­tion and there­fore, we re­ject it com­plete­ly," he said.