Yvonne Webb

With 17 days be­fore Christ­mas, Arcelor­Mit­tal has sent home 600 work­ers with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

How­ev­er, Christo­pher Hen­ry, pres­i­dent of the Steel Work­ers Union of T&T which rep­re­sents the work­ers said the mat­ter would be placed in the hands of its lawyers and may be head­ing to court for a fi­nal out­come.

Hen­ry ad­dressed work­ers at the union's Cal­i­for­nia head­quar­ters yes­ter­day hours af­ter the work­ers were sent home and re­called on­ly weeks ago the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert was say­ing there would be no blue Christ­mas.

He said Arcelor­Mit­tal not on­ly laid off 800 con­tract work­ers ear­li­er this year but sent home 600-plus per­ma­nent work­ers weeks be­fore Christ­mas.

In con­firm­ing the lay-offs, the com­pa­ny, in a state­ment yes­ter­day said it had no op­tion, blam­ing the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions in the glob­al steel in­dus­try and its in­abil­i­ty to reach an agree­ment with the union for its de­ci­sion.

Last Fri­day, the com­pa­ny met with the union and said it was im­pos­si­ble for the com­pa­ny to keep work­ers on the plant over a pro­tract­ed pe­ri­od with­out hav­ing work for them to per­form.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, Arcelor­Mit­tal, Point Lisas, an­nounced that be­cause of over-sup­ply of steel in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and the dry­ing up of or­ders for its Di­rect Re­duced Iron (DRI) and steel prod­ucts, it had to scale down its op­er­a­tions. The union claims a Cana­di­an firm has been con­tract­ed by the com­pa­ny.

"The glob­al steel in­dus­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing its worst re­ces­sion in ten years, com­pa­ra­ble to that ex­pe­ri­enced in the ear­ly '90s. Every steel com­pa­ny in the world is fac­ing this dif­fi­cult re­al­i­ty and Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas has had no choice but to re­act to these changes in the in­dus­try," it said.

The work­ers are be­ing sent home with $2,000 each as com­pen­sa­tion for De­cem­ber 7 to Jan­u­ary 15, next year. The steel com­pa­ny said the over-sup­ply of steel in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and the dry­ing up of or­ders for its DRI and steel prod­ucts pro­duced at its Point Lisas plant has led to this tem­po­rary shut down of its op­er­a­tions.

How­ev­er, Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer of union said while it was un­de­ni­able there was a glob­al de­pres­sion in the world mar­ket, he said he was sad­dened that the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny which made mil­lions and bil­lions in the 30-odd years it has been op­er­at­ing in T&T, as soon as they were go­ing through a rough patch the work­ers, who were paid the least, were the one who got sev­ered.

The com­pa­ny has been in lim­bo for months, say­ing it could not pro­duce steel at a prof­itable price, even as it ne­go­ti­at­ed un­suc­cess­ful­ly to re­new its ex­pired con­tract for elec­tric­i­ty and nat­ur­al gas.

The com­pa­ny was put in an idle mode and a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) was signed be­tween the com­pa­ny and the union to have work­ers do al­ter­na­tive jobs, which were once done by con­tract work­ers and which were out­side of their job de­scrip­tion. The MOU was ex­pect­ed to be re­viewed.

How­ev­er, Bai­ley said that mid-stream be­fore the scope of work and sched­ule of jobs out­lined for the work­ers were ex­haust­ed, "the com­pa­ny moved the goal post and came to the union to draw up new pro­pos­als for the union to agree with to send work­ers on forced va­ca­tion for the pe­ri­od De­cem­ber to mid-Jan­u­ary.

"We said to the com­pa­ny legal­ly we did not have the pow­ers to send any work­er on forced va­ca­tion, " Bai­ley added.

He said ac­cord­ing to a clause in their col­lec­tive agree­ment, there were cer­tain work­ers who would have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed va­ca­tion over two pe­ri­ods who could have been sent on leave.

"The com­pa­ny said they need­ed to go and check their sta­tis­tics and come back to the union but this morn­ing (yes­ter­day) while the union was en­grossed in its statu­to­ry ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing, the meet­ing was in­ter­rupt­ed by the com­pa­ny which re­quest­ed an emer­gency meet­ing."

Bai­ley said the union mem­bers broke its meet­ing and im­me­di­ate­ly went across to the com­pa­ny where the com­pa­ny's CEO, Robert Bel­lisle, placed two pro­pos­als on the ta­ble: One for the com­pa­ny to send the work­ers home for the month of De­cem­ber or the oth­er op­tion to lay off work­ers and give them $2,000 for the pe­ri­od De­cem­ber 7 to Jan­u­ary 15."

He said the meet­ing end­ed with no con­cen­sus but short­ly af­ter they left, work­ers start­ed call­ing the union to in­form them that the com­pa­ny was is­su­ing let­ters ef­fec­tive­ly send­ing them home.

The union is call­ing for Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley and Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus to in­ter­vene.