Pre­dictably, the an­nounce­ment by An­cel Ro­get, the pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU), on Sun­day that the trade union in­tend­ed to serve an of­fi­cial strike no­tice on state-owned Petrotrin yes­ter­day led to thou­sands of mo­torists across the coun­try flock­ing to gas sta­tions to fill up their tanks. Up to late yes­ter­day, many gas sta­tions across the coun­try had run out of the gaso­line and diesel that have be­come an in­dis­pens­able part of any mod­ern econ­o­my.

Yes­ter­day's pan­ic-buy­ing of fu­els is ex­pect­ed to be a fore­run­ner of the crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion that may de­vel­op across T&T if the OW­TU goes ahead with its plan to launch a strike on Sat­ur­day. If there is a Petrotrin strike, there is lit­tle doubt that the en­tire coun­try will lose.

The pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try will de­cline as work­ers spend long hours in lines out­side gas sta­tions wait­ing for their fu­el of choice.

If the strike is ef­fec­tive and it goes on for long enough, the coun­try will soon run out of fu­els al­to­geth­er as, while mem­bers of the De­fence Force may be in a po­si­tion to dri­ve the fu­el tankers, the op­er­a­tion of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre re­quires spe­cialised skills, which are not read­i­ly avail­able out­side Petrotrin. Third­ly, the thou­sands of em­ploy­ees and con­trac­tors who earn their liv­ing by work­ing di­rect­ly at Petrotrin or for the scores of com­pa­nies that sup­ply goods and ser­vices to the com­pa­ny are al­so like­ly to lose as their in­comes will be se­vere­ly cur­tailed dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the strike.

The com­pa­ny, which op­er­ates one of a hand­ful of oil re­finer­ies in the Caribbean re­gion, will lose as it would be un­able to meet its do­mes­tic and ex­ter­nal com­mit­ment to sup­ply fu­els. In the last au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­port avail­able on its Web site, for the 12-month pe­ri­od end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010, Petrotrin record­ed rev­enues of $25.9 bil­lion and an af­ter-tax loss of $134 mil­lion. This was an im­prove­ment from the $22 bil­lion in rev­enues and the af­ter-tax loss of $846 mil­lion that the com­pa­ny re­port­ed for the year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2009.

Giv­en the large for­eign loans that Petrotrin has tak­en in or­der to com­plete the long-over­due gaso­line op­ti­mi­sa­tion plan, it is safe to say that the com­pa­ny can ill af­ford strike ac­tion at this time. We do not in­tend, at this point, to go in­to the mer­its or de­mer­its of the trade union's case as op­posed to the com­pa­ny's po­si­tion. Petrotrin has been much clear­er in out­lin­ing what its pro­pos­al for a five per cent wage in­crease to the work­ers in the five bar­gain­ing units will mean for them. In an ad­ver­tise­ment in to­day's news­pa­pers, Petrotrin states that a gen­er­al labour­er at the com­pa­ny will earn a pro­ject­ed salary of $11,895.47-af­ter the con­sol­i­da­tion of the cost of liv­ing al­lowance and the ap­pli­ca­tion of the five per cent in­crease.

In the con­text of what oth­er pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees such as teach­ers earn, can Mr Ro­get sus­tain his ar­gu­ment that a gen­er­al labour­er at Petrotrin is be­ing de­prived of a fair wage and would nev­er ac­cept a five per cent wage in­crease of­fer? Al­so, while Mr Ro­get says that the union has re­duced its de­mand con­sid­er­ably from its orig­i­nal 75 per cent wage in­crease, he has not made pub­lic the OW­TU's cur­rent de­mand nor how much that will cost the com­pa­ny.

Our rec­om­men­da­tion is that the union can­cels its strike no­tice, re­turns to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble and set­tles for some­thing that will al­low all the par­ties to walk away from the ta­ble feel­ing as though they are win­ners. As it stands, if the union goes ahead with its strike threat, we all lose.