KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get warned yes­ter­day that there could be a re­peat of the 2021 strike at Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) that al­most crip­pled the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

Ro­get, who led an ear­ly morn­ing protest by re­tired and re­trenched TCL work­ers at the en­trance of the com­pa­ny’s Clax­ton Bay plant, in­sist­ed, how­ev­er, that the OW­TU did not want a con­fronta­tion but was in­ter­est­ed in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and jus­tice.

The for­mer work­ers car­ried plac­ards and sang union songs as they pressed their de­mands for pay­ment of out­stand­ing Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) and gain shar­ing.

“We shall not be moved,” they sang as they blocked trucks and oth­er ve­hi­cles from en­ter­ing the com­pound, caus­ing traf­fic along the South­ern Main Road.

Ro­get said: “You would re­call some­time in 2012, out of the frus­tra­tion of the de­lay to set­tle the ne­go­ti­a­tions, we took strike ac­tion here at TCL. That is not off the cards. That is not off the ta­ble be­cause wher­ev­er work­ers are ex­ploit­ed, wher­ev­er work­ers are de­nied their just due, work­ers have all right to take ac­tion in their de­fence.”

The out­stand­ing CO­LA and gains shar­ing are for three col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods be­tween 2015 and 2021.

He said the com­pa­ny should have paid the out­stand­ing al­lowances but re­fus­es to do so un­til the union signs a new agree­ment for 2021-2024. He claimed the com­pa­ny was with­hold­ing the pay­ment as ran­som to force the OW­TU to sign a 0-0-0 wage of­fer for the out­stand­ing bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od.

Ac­cord­ing to Ro­get, dur­ing the 2015-2018 and 2018-2021 pe­ri­ods, some of the re­tirees and re­trenched work­ers were still at the com­pa­ny so they are en­ti­tled to those pay­ments.

“We are not now talk­ing about new mon­ey. We are talk­ing about mon­ey al­ready earned by peo­ple who ex­it­ed the com­pa­ny on the ba­sis of re­tire­ment un­der the pe­ri­od we are talk­ing about,” he said

The OW­TU leader said there were oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing past and present work­ers. He claimed TCL had uni­lat­er­al­ly re­moved ap­prox­i­mate­ly $100 mil­lion from the work­ers’ pen­sion plan, jeop­ar­dis­ing its vi­a­bil­i­ty.

Ro­get al­so re­called the work­place death of ma­chine at­ten­dant Garvin Ra­moutar at TCL’s Mayo plant. He said there are health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues and the po­ten­tial for more deaths.

In ad­di­tion, re­tirees do not have prop­er ac­cess to their med­ical plan.

In a mes­sage to TCL’s par­ent com­pa­ny, CE­MEX, Ro­get said the val­ue of the lo­cal com­pa­ny in­creased based on the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the work­ers who worked and re­tired.

The union called on CE­MEX to re­spect the work­ers’ in­put and pay them their en­ti­tle­ments.