STO­RIES BY SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), backed by the ma­jor­i­ty of the trade union move­ment, last night en­tered a “war room” to dis­cuss its next move on the fu­ture of Petrotrin, af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed his po­si­tion that the re­fin­ery will be shut down.

This was the out­come of an al­most three-hour long meet­ing yes­ter­day be­tween OW­TU’s pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, union lead­ers and Row­ley at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, to dis­cuss the clo­sure of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery among oth­er is­sues.

The meet­ing was held af­ter Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke de­liv­ered a let­ter to Row­ley on Mon­day ask­ing for an ur­gent meet­ing with him on Petrotrin.

Yes­ter­day, Ro­get summed up the meet­ing as “not pro­duc­tive. And yet for an­oth­er time, we saw where de­ci­sions were made re­al­ly leav­ing out the peo­ple that counts. That is a wor­ry­ing sig­nal.”

An­oth­er wor­ry­ing sig­nal, Ro­get said, was the “ar­ro­gant” pos­tur­ing by Row­ley and his Gov­ern­ment, not­ing he was not open for di­a­logue to come to an am­i­ca­ble de­ci­sion.

“They seem to be­lieve that they will be there for­ev­er. We have a dif­fer­ent be­lief. The Gov­ern­ment is per­haps bank­rupt of ideas, so they can­not see that they are blind­sided and be­yond the hori­zon of the doom and gloom they con­tin­ue to preach every day,” Ro­get told the me­dia and union mem­bers af­ter­wards.

Ro­get said four is­sues were dis­cussed with the PM, among them out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions that were stalled, the non-im­ple­men­ta­tion of set­tled ne­go­ti­a­tions and non-pay­ment of ar­rears and re­trench­ment at Petrotrin.

When the is­sue of Petrotrin arose, Ro­get said they men­tioned the April 3, 2018, Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment reg­is­tered with the Min­istry of Labour that the Gov­ern­ment had signed off on to start the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin and for talks to be held be­tween the OW­TU and Petrotrin’s board.

Ro­get said Petrotrin’s board had de­part­ed from that ap­proach and went to Cab­i­net and came back with a de­ci­sion to shut down the re­fin­ery, which they ob­ject­ed to be­cause the OW­TU had no op­por­tu­ni­ty to have a say, which they felt was wrong.

“And it was done in bad faith to agree on an ap­proach and come back with some­thing else. The Prime Min­is­ter is hold­ing to the po­si­tion that they should vi­o­late the agree­ment that we had. So they are go­ing ahead,” Ro­get said.

Tak­ing that in­to ac­count, Ro­get said the work­ers will be sent home. He said Row­ley in­sist­ed that he was not pre­pared to go back on his ini­tial de­ci­sion.

Ro­get made it clear the union was nev­er against the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin. He said when he ques­tioned the PM on plans for the re­fin­ery, Ro­get said Row­ley told him “that is to­mor­row’s sto­ry.”

“We found that re­al­ly to be un­ac­cept­able, and of course, it is dis­re­spect­ful to the work­ers in the re­fin­ery. That to­mor­row that he can­not tell to­day is one where some­body is go­ing to buy it.”

Ro­get in­sist­ed the re­fin­ery will be pur­chased with­out terms and con­di­tions to serve the in­ter­est of a few.

“The trade union move­ment has de­cid­ed that on the ba­sis of the re­fusal to halt the de­ci­sion and go back to the MOA, that as we leave here we go and meet in emer­gency ses­sion to de­ter­mine the next move and an an­nounce­ment will be made. We are go­ing to go in our war room and de­ter­mine what is go­ing to hap­pen.”

The union lead­ers lat­er gath­ered at SWW­TU’s head­quar­ters, Port-of-Spain, to dis­cuss their next move. Ro­get said you can­not have a PM dis­re­gard­ing a process and then triv­i­al­is­ing it “when that process will have dire con­se­quences for work­ers.”

In due course, Ro­get said the OW­TU will dis­close its pro­pos­al on the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin. He al­so warned, “We are not go­ing to take this non­sense by Dr Row­ley and his Cab­i­net min­is­ters. All of them shak­ing their heads in agree­ment with what he is say­ing. All of them to us is noth­ing more than dash­board pup­pies for and be­half of a Prime Min­is­ter who they fear.”

Ro­get said to­day’s Rest and Re­flec­tion will be on more than ever, say­ing for three years Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion had mis­man­aged the coun­try.