From court­room to high­way to­day.

Af­ter the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) filed In­dus­tri­al Court ac­tion yes­ter­day to block Petrotrin’s ter­mi­na­tion of work­ers, the union hits the road to­day on a three-day march from south to north.

OW­TU Ed­u­ca­tion/Re­search of­fi­cer Ozzi War­wick yes­ter­day said those un­der­tak­ing the march will large­ly be OW­TU gen­er­al coun­cil mem­bers plus labour lead­ers. The first leg be­gins at 9 am from the Pointe-a-Pierre round­about.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress whip David Lee said he and oth­er UNC MPs will ac­com­pa­ny OW­TU mem­bers from the start in Pointe-a-Pierre, which is his con­stituen­cy. Var­i­ous UNC MPs will par­tic­i­pate dur­ing each leg of the march.

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah said he and MSJ mem­bers will al­so join for the three days.

From Pointe-a-Pierre, to­day’s first leg in­volves stops at Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed, T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion, Pt Lisas, Pow­er­gen and Yarra.

“Work­ers will be wait­ing along stops to greet us,” War­wick added.

The first leg ends at Rien­zi Com­plex in Cou­va at 4 pm. Marchers will then overnight at Rien­zi.

To­mor­row’s 31-kilo­me­tre leg takes marchers through Cen­tral Trinidad with­out stop, while Fri­day’s last leg be­gins from 10 am at Aranguez Sa­van­nah, San Juan.

“On Fri­day, we’re call­ing on all con­cerned cit­i­zens to join the last leg of the march in­to Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port-of-Spain. We may al­so pass round by the Par­lia­ment,” War­wick said.

UNC’s Lee said, “Gov­ern­ment’s Bud­get failed on the Petrotrin as­pect. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert dan­gled a $2.6 bil­lion sev­er­ance pack­age for work­ers but didn’t say how this would be fund­ed and gave no specifics on em­ploy­ment for fence­line com­mu­ni­ties. He didn’t say how they’d meet the Au­gust 2019 bul­let re­pay­ment for the (US)$850m bond. His line about do­ing it their ‘way’ was pure PNM ar­ro­gance—dis­re­gard­ing how peo­ple feel.”

UNC Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh, who will al­so be on the march, added, “We don’t know how Im­bert ar­rived at the $2.6 bil­lion sev­er­ance pack­age fig­ure, whether it is based on the col­lec­tive agree­ment. Ex­pla­na­tions are al­so need­ed since OW­TU says there are 9,000 Petrotrin work­ers though Im­bert on­ly spoke of VSEP for 1,400 and about a few hun­dred oth­ers. Nor have we heard if work­ers will have to re­tool to source jobs he says are be­ing cre­at­ed in oth­er in­dus­tries.”

At a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Im­bert—com­ment­ing on OW­TU’s bid to lease the re­fin­ery—said it was high­ly un­like­ly the union had found some­one with the nec­es­sary $6 bil­lion in for­eign ex­change to give Petrotrin with­out re­struc­tur­ing and re­quired re­fin­ery clo­sure.

“Petrotrin’s been los­ing $2b an­nu­al­ly since 2011. It hasn’t paid tax­es and roy­al­ties to­talling $3.5 bil­lion. A year ago KP­MG au­di­tors ad­mit­ted it would nev­er be prof­itable. This can’t con­tin­ue. Every­one—even the UNC—knew it is un­prof­itable, but it is a po­lit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive is­sue.”

He ex­pects Petrotrin will be han­dling work­ers’ ter­mi­na­tion ben­e­fits pack­ages, which he said are dou­ble the in­dus­try stan­dard. He said he hoped Petrotrin did not ap­proach the Fi­nance Min­istry for this. He said the pack­age would com­prise one year’s loss­es and halt­ing this would mean mon­ey could be re­cov­ered in a sec­ond year.

He added that re­fi­nanc­ing for the Au­gust 2019 bond re­pay­ment is be­ing han­dled by Petrotrin and he is con­fi­dent it would be suc­cess­ful since re­struc­tur­ing/re­fin­ery clo­sure had be­gun.

Im­bert said jobs for work­ers with La Brea’s Chi­na Har­bour project would start from this year. He al­so cit­ed oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties via the Bei­jing Con­struc­tion Cou­va In­dus­tri­al Park, San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front project and Skin­ner Park de­vel­op­ment be­tween 2018/19.