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Sunday, February 23, 2025

OWTU vows to continue protests against T&TEC

by

30 days ago
20250124
OWTU president general Ancel Roget, left, vice president Reesa Ramlogan-Ajodha and executive trustee/labour relations officer Jonathan Bowen chat before addressing journalists at a media conference at the OWTU Paramount Building, San Fernando, yesterday.

OWTU president general Ancel Roget, left, vice president Reesa Ramlogan-Ajodha and executive trustee/labour relations officer Jonathan Bowen chat before addressing journalists at a media conference at the OWTU Paramount Building, San Fernando, yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) Pres­i­dent An­cil Ro­get has de­clared that work­ers at the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) will con­tin­ue their protests de­spite an in­dus­tri­al court in­junc­tion bar­ring them from in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Ro­get in­sist­ed that the in­junc­tion could not pre­vent work­ers from high­light­ing is­sues at T&TEC. He stressed that while the court or­der pro­hib­it­ed in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, work­ers are protest­ing out­side their work­ing hours, which he main­tains does not vi­o­late the rul­ing.

Ro­get al­so crit­i­cised the court’s stance, stat­ing that the OW­TU felt threat­ened by its warn­ing of pos­si­ble jail time should the union be deemed to have en­gaged in in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. He dis­missed the idea that the union was com­mit­ting any of­fence, say­ing, “Jail is for crim­i­nals.”

He ac­cused T&TEC of us­ing com­pa­ny re­sources to hire “high-priced” at­tor­neys to se­cure the in­junc­tion in an at­tempt to si­lence work­ers.

“That in­junc­tion did not and can­not and shall not pre­vent the work­ers from con­tin­u­ing their protest ac­tion. My first an­nounce­ment this morn­ing is the protest ac­tion at T&TEC, in­volv­ing the work­ers, will con­tin­ue, both in the work­ers’ in­ter­est and in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est. We will con­tin­ue with that. It is not in­dus­tri­al ac­tion,” Ro­get as­sert­ed.

The protests, he said, will per­sist un­til T&TEC re­solves long­stand­ing is­sues, par­tic­u­lar­ly de­fec­tive equip­ment. He claimed some com­pa­ny ve­hi­cles are in such poor con­di­tion that one has no air con­di­tion­ing, forc­ing em­ploy­ees to use um­brel­las in­side when it rains. He added that T&TEC al­so had an aged fleet.

“We are not en­gaged in in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, but we will not op­er­ate de­fec­tive equip­ment, tools, and ve­hi­cles,” he said.

Ro­get fur­ther stat­ed that a lack of spare parts is con­tribut­ing to equip­ment fail­ures.Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said work­ers strug­gle to ac­cess es­sen­tial per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE). The union has called for a cen­tralised and ef­fi­cient pro­cure­ment sys­tem to en­sure stan­dard­ised PPE dis­tri­b­u­tion.

The short­age of man­pow­er, he added, has led to ex­ces­sive over­time, which is af­fect­ing work­ers’ health and fam­i­ly lives.

“A high lev­el of over­time in­di­cates an op­er­a­tional de­fi­cien­cy,” he said, ar­gu­ing that T&TEC’s man­age­ment is us­ing the in­junc­tion to pres­sure work­ers in­to work­ing ad­di­tion­al hours un­der threat of ar­rest.

Ad­dress­ing wage con­cerns, Ro­get point­ed out that the last salary ad­just­ment for T&TEC work­ers was in 2014. Now, 15 years lat­er, work­ers have been told there will be no in­crease. The union has ap­pealed a re­cent judg­ment on the mat­ter, which Ro­get de­scribed as “un­fair, wicked, and high­ly po­lit­i­cal.” He ac­cused the court of dis­re­gard­ing the work­ers’ con­tri­bu­tions and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, in­stead us­ing ex­ter­nal ev­i­dence to sup­port T&TEC’s po­si­tion.

He al­so called for a foren­sic au­dit in­to what he de­scribed as a “cor­rupt con­tract sys­tem” at T&TEC.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to T&TEC yes­ter­day for a re­sponse and is await­ing a state­ment.


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