Rose­marie Sant

The Oil­field’ Work­ers’ Trade Union says it fears that 9,000 work­ers would be di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the clo­sure of State oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin and has sig­nalled that it will be ex­plor­ing all pos­si­bil­i­ties in­clud­ing le­gal ac­tion, to get the Gov­ern­ment and the Board of Petrotrin to re­verse the de­ci­sion to shut down the com­pa­ny.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search Of­fi­cer of the OW­TU Ozzie War­wick said the union had al­so known that the plan was to ex­it all 3,500 work­ers since the pre­sen­ta­tion made by Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet to the union on Au­gust 28.

War­wick said, “This is ex­act­ly what the union was say­ing. We have al­ways said they are plan­ning to send home all the work­ers.”

The Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed yes­ter­day that Es­pinet had con­firmed that 3,500 em­ploy­ees would be sent home and would have to reap­ply for jobs.

War­wick said the re­al num­ber was far high­er than the re­port­ed 3,500.

Ac­cord­ing to War­wick, in ad­di­tion to the 3,500 per­ma­nent work­ers, 2,000 ca­su­al and tem­po­rary work­ers and about 3,500 work­ers who were em­ployed by var­i­ous con­trac­tors will al­so be sent home.

The union is due to hold a news con­fer­ence to­day which will be ad­dressed by OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get.

Yes­ter­day, Ro­get was un­avail­able for com­ment as was the Es­pinet who did not an­swer calls to his mo­bile phone.

War­wick ac­cused Es­pinet of be­ing less than hon­est when he said there was no plan to de­stroy the union.

War­wick said: “You send home 3,500 per­ma­nent work­ers plus the 2,000 causal and tem­po­rary work­ers who are al­so part of our mem­ber­ship, that is dec­i­mat­ing our bar­gain­ing unit—it is union bust­ing that is un­fold­ing. The chair­man he can­not say he not about to lick up OW­TU, but that ac­tion of send­ing home 3,500 per­ma­nent work­ers and ca­su­al work­ers will do that.”

War­wick said the OW­TU would be ex­plor­ing all dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties in­clud­ing le­gal ac­tion. We are pre­pared to do every­thing that we can to re­verse that de­ci­sion.”

He said: This is why the union worked hard he said to “make sure that we had an al­ter­na­tive plan, so that the coun­try will know there is a choice and the nar­ra­tive that the coun­try had no choice is just not true.”

He said when the union last met with the Petrotrin Board, Es­pinet promised that when next they met they would be able to go through the al­ter­na­tive and meet the peo­ple who came up with the num­bers. But so far, he said, this had not hap­pened.

War­wick said the union would be push­ing for the meet­ing.

“Our point is that with a ma­jor de­ci­sion like this, the coun­try needs to know what is your ra­tio­nale.” he stat­ed.

He said there had been no hint that clo­sure was on the board not even when the chair­man ap­peared be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee in Feb­ru­ary or at any meet­ing with the union not even in April when a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing was signed.

War­wick said once the com­pa­ny was closed and work­ers had to reap­ply for their jobs, they would not be al­lowed to join a trade union and their terms and con­di­tions would be in­fe­ri­or.

“This is not just about union bust­ing but they are go­ing to dec­i­mate the terms and con­di­tions of work­ers in the oil and gas in­dus­try,” he said.