While Gov­ern­ment has be­gun pro­cess­ing a $2.6 bil­lion re­trench­ment pay­out to 3,400 Petrotrin re­fin­ery work­ers the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), in a sur­prise move yes­ter­day, filed an ap­pli­ca­tion at the In­dus­tri­al Court, Port-of-Spain, to bar the ter­mi­na­tion of the com­pa­ny’s work­force.

The mat­ter will be heard at 10 am to­day in court. The hear­ing will co­in­cide with the start of the OW­TU’s three-day protest march be­gin­ning in San Fer­nan­do and end­ing in the cap­i­tal city on Fri­day. (See oth­er sto­ry)

OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get con­firmed that the union’s at­tor­neys filed an in­junc­tion in the In­dus­tri­al Court to pre­vent Petrotrin from send­ing home its work­ers, as the state-owned com­pa­ny had breached an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence out­lined in its April 3, 2018, Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MOA) signed by Robert Ri­ley, ad­vis­er to Petrotrin’s board, which out­lined re­struc­tur­ing the com­pa­ny over an 18-month pe­ri­od and to form a work­ing com­mit­tee.

The MOA al­so paved the way for Petrotrin to be di­vid­ed in­to four en­ti­ties—Land: North and East (LNE), Trin­mar Off­shore Op­er­a­tions, Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion and the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal.

The MOA stat­ed that the com­mit­tee would ad­dress, re­solve and agree on the four or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­tures, work process­es, skills, com­pe­ten­cies and man­pow­er re­quire­ments which would make the com­pa­ny in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive and en­sure its sur­vival, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty.

Both par­ties al­so agreed to a timetable for meet­ings start­ing in April 2018 with the en­hance­ment of op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies, re­duc­tion of waste and the pro­mo­tion of the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness.

“Petrotrin has breached this MOA. And so an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence has been com­mit­ted, which we want ven­ti­lat­ed be­fore the court. The union has filed an ap­pli­ca­tion to pre­vent the com­pa­ny from send­ing home its work­ers,” Ro­get said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Ltd.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, the OW­TU ar­gued that Petrotrin had not been meet­ing and treat­ing in good faith with the union.

Asked if he was ex­plor­ing his op­tions in pre­vent­ing the State from liq­ui­dat­ing Petrotrin’s as­sets, Ro­get said, “That is an­oth­er mat­ter. You have to re­mem­ber what brought us to this point, in that we would have agreed to co-op­er­ate in so far as re­struc­tur­ing the com­pa­ny is con­cerned in­to a MOA which they have aban­doned.”

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the OW­TU main­tained the cur­rent ap­proach by Petrotrin was not about re­struc­tur­ing but shut­ting down the com­pa­ny, which was nev­er rec­om­mend­ed by the Lash­ley and Solomon’s and As­so­ciates re­ports.

In an­nounc­ing the shut­down of Petrotrin’s Mar­ket­ing and Re­fin­ing op­er­a­tions in Au­gust, Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet said the com­pa­ny did not meet with the union be­cause they want­ed to have a pro­pos­al to put on the ta­ble re­gard­ing the re­struc­tur­ing. Es­pinet said af­ter con­sult­ing with ex­perts, the board’s pro­pos­al was pre­sent­ed to the union, which was to shut down and ter­mi­nate the work­ers.

Dur­ing Mon­day’s Bud­get, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said ter­mi­nat­ed em­ploy­ees of Petrotrin will be pro­vid­ed with at­trac­tive pack­ages. Ear­ly es­ti­ma­tion puts this ter­mi­na­tion pay­ment at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.6 bil­lion.