Geisha Kow­lessar

State-owned fu­el dis­trib­u­tor Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NP) has fired 68 em­ploy­ees for what it de­scribed as an "il­le­gal work stop­page" at the com­pa­ny's gantries at the NP's head of­fice in Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, in Au­gust.

They were part of a group of 85 work­ers who had en­gaged in an Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union-sanc­tioned work stop­page from Au­gust 13-15. Their ac­tions had re­sult­ed in pan­ic buy­ing through­out the coun­try and all 85 em­ploy­ees were ini­tial­ly sus­pend­ed with pay while the com­pa­ny in­ves­ti­gat­ed the mat­ter.Fol­low­ing dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ings, how­ev­er, the com­pa­ny yes­ter­day ter­mi­nat­ed the em­ploy­ment of 68 of the group for breach­es of their con­tracts.

In a one-page state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, NP's act­ing cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Rae Gilbert said in­di­vid­ual dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ings were held on Oc­to­ber 7 and 10 and each sus­pend­ed em­ploy­ee was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the fol­low­ing charges:

�2 re­fusal to per­form job func­tions

�2 par­tic­i­pa­tion along with oth­ers in an il­le­gal work stop­page

�2 unau­tho­rised ab­sence from work sta­tions

Work stop­pages such as this one, Gilbert said, have re­sult­ed in se­vere loss­es to the com­pa­ny over the past two years."Over the last two years there have been 20 work stop­pages by the OW­TU at NP. A sin­gle work stop­page equates to $9.5 mil­lion in loss of rev­enue per day to NP," she added.The em­ploy­ees were rep­re­sent­ed by the OW­TU dur­ing the hear­ings.NP said the OW­TU cit­ed health and safe­ty is­sues as the rea­sons for their mem­bers with­hold­ing their labour dur­ing the spec­i­fied pe­ri­od.

"How­ev­er, at the time of the il­le­gal work stop­page, the OW­TU cit­ed pri­vati­sa­tion as the rea­son for their il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, as doc­u­ment­ed in sev­er­al in­ter­views giv­en by the OW­TU to the me­dia," Gilbert said in her state­ment.NP al­so re­quest­ed an in­spec­tion by the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) body in Ju­ly, which took place on Au­gust 28 and 29 and Sep­tem­ber 3, 11 and 12 this year.

"The com­pa­ny is in re­ceipt of the OSH re­port which did not trig­ger the is­suance of an im­prove­ment or a pro­hi­bi­tion no­tice, as is man­dat­ed in cas­es of se­ri­ous or im­mi­nent dan­ger in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 74 of the OSH Act," Gilbert said.Say­ing NP re­mains com­mit­ted to the prac­tice of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, Gilbert said the com­pa­ny's fo­cus was to en­sure the time­ly de­liv­ery of fu­el to ser­vice sta­tion net­works, air­ports, in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers, in­clud­ing the Port Au­thor­i­ty and Pow­er­gen, hos­pi­tals and the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

"We have been able to main­tain a non-dis­rupt­ed op­er­a­tion in spite of the il­le­gal work stop­page ini­ti­at­ed by the OW­TU last Au­gust," she said."NP has ac­tu­al­ly dou­bled the ef­fi­cien­cy of its de­liv­er­ies since this il­le­gal work stop­page and is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing its con­ti­nu­ity."

A source said last night that OW­TU of­fi­cials were in emer­gency dis­cus­sions in the wake of NP's ac­tion yes­ter­day. Calls to OW­TU pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get and oth­er mem­bers of his ex­ec­u­tive thus went unan­swered when the T&T Guardian sought a com­ment on the mat­ter.

Pri­vati­sa­tion com­plaints

The NP work­ers had protest­ed over what they claimed was an at­tempt by man­age­ment to pri­va­tise the com­pa­ny.Wayne Lea­cock, OW­TU's branch pres­i­dent at NP Port-of-Spain, told mem­bers of the me­dia in Au­gust that the walk­out was a show of the em­ploy­ees' con­cerns over man­age­ment's award of a $394,000 con­tract to a pri­vate com­pa­ny to con­duct load­ing on the gantry.

Lea­cock was quot­ed as say­ing, "Since the ap­point­ment of the chief ex­ec­u­tive and this board the work­ers have been fear­ful for the se­cu­ri­ty of their jobs and their fu­ture."The mod­el that the com­pa­ny is tak­ing now is one of out­sourc­ing the jobs and the work­ers are fear­ful that they could lose their jobs through out­sourc­ing."The com­pa­ny de­nied then that any such move was be­ing made.

Lea­cock had al­so re­ferred to two per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees at the Pointe-a-Pierre branch who were dis­missed be­cause they re­fused to train man­agers to load the trucks at the gantry. Those man­agers in turn would train peo­ple com­ing from pri­vate com­pa­nies to do the work­ers' jobs."The work­ers at NP are here to do their jobs and will not stand by and al­low this prece­dent to be set where any con­tract labour will take over our jobs," Lea­cock added.

He said the com­pa­ny's col­lec­tive agree­ment stat­ed that no job done by work­ers should be con­tract­ed out if it would de­mote or make those work­ers' jobs re­dun­dant.