KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

It has been eight years since in­ter­na­tion­al steel gi­ant Arcelor­Mit­tal closed its gates and left 644 per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees on the bread­line. At present, many hus­tle jobs to make ends meet as the labour mar­ket does not have jobs for their unique skill sets.

As the Steel Work­ers Union (SWUTT) held its an­nu­al can­dle­light vig­il out­side the old Point Lisas plant on Mon­day night, pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley claimed that two col­leagues took their own lives fol­low­ing re­trench­ment as they strug­gled to come to terms with their job­less­ness while hav­ing fam­i­ly com­mit­ments. Apart from the Arcelor­Mit­tal staff, he said con­trac­tors who gave over 20 years of ser­vice to the com­pa­ny al­so suf­fered.

Bai­ley said when Arcelor­Mit­tal closed on March 11, 2016, the Gov­ern­ment al­lowed it to leave T&T with­out pay­ing any sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits to work­ers who were cit­i­zens. Since then, he said, the work­ers faced hard­ships, in­clud­ing death and work and stress-re­lat­ed dis­eases. He said SWUTT holds a memo­r­i­al every year on March 11 to re­mind the coun­try of the in­jus­tice done to cit­i­zens while the politi­cians al­lowed it.

“To date, no leg­is­la­tion has been brought to the Par­lia­ment to en­sure no re­cur­rence of such is com­ing now or in the fu­ture for any work­ing-class cit­i­zen of this coun­try. We are say­ing that the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate has failed and con­tin­ues to fail by fail­ing to up­hold its oblig­a­tion to en­sure that it pro­tects the cit­i­zens. That is part and par­cel of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” Bai­ley said.

He said SWUTT re­called that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour SC was Arcelor­Mit­tal’s le­gal coun­sel in 2016 and broke the news to the union on March 11, 2016 that it was clos­ing. He said for­mer AG Faris Al-Rawi rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­ny in the past.