The smell of curry just thrown in a big iron pot of hot oil filled the humid air under the yellow and blue tarpaulin-covered Trinidad Cement Ltd (TCL) strike camp at Claxton Bay. Male cooks tended the pots of curried channa and alloo and curried goat in a makeshift kitchen in a corner of the bamboo-propped camp just outside the TCL security-manned main gate. One man peeled garlic, another worked on the alloo. Four workers played a card game of rummy around a table. Behind them, a white paper calendar of sorts: numbers 1 to 90-representing the 90-day strike the OWTU has threatened. The numbers 1-19 were crossed off. Number of days to go: 71. A four-man drum group, sitting under the shade of a mango tree, keeps the momentum up in the camp. Stephen Tang, a trim, fit 63-year-old self-proclaimed retiree of "Texaco, Trintoc, Petrotrin," is the ex-president of the Pt Fortin branch of the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union (OWTU). Standing on a wooden pallet, Tang's job this Friday mid-morning was to build and keep striking workers' morale high, to remind them of the reason(s) why they were locked out of the compound since March 6.
OWTU branch president Lawrence Renaud told workers, most of them big, burly men, to show up outside TCL Claxton Bay plant from 5 am the next day. "How we look now, we need to look ten times bigger than this. Management fooling the public. Trucks coming here, some leaving empty. No mill running, no kiln running, but they moving cement," Renaud said. "They trying to break the struggle."
A worker at the back muttered, "The propaganda machine at work." Tang is introduced as a comrade who successfully led several struggles. He said not using a microphone is a strength, a strategy to ensure the "enemy" doesn't hear what happens in the camp.Tang said when he was a shop steward back in 1981, OWTU president Ancel Roget was an apprentice."OWTU is my god," Tang said. The OWTU gave me my job at Texaco when I was 14, my medical and my pension at 60." Tang reminded the men and a few women-roughly numbering 150-that this was a legal strike. March 16 marked their third Friday off the job.
TCL's policy: No work, no pay.
The cement manufacturer has a staff of about 350, of whom about 300 are unionised. A senior staffer who is striking said on Monday that less than five per cent of employees have returned to work. "Some junior staffers never striked, but stayed in. Asked how have workers been surviving during the strike, the senior staffer said, "It is a struggle, you have to have a will to do something, people are committed to the cause. Financially, they are surviving on their savings." He said other trade unions such as the Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union and the general council of the OWTU, the union branches of TSTT and T&TEC have also contributed funds. The owners of bars, supermarkets and meat shops have either given produce or sold food at discounts. The TCL inhouse canteen staff have supplied breakfast for the workers. A farmers' association gave them fresh produce. Tang's voice rings out in the still air. "John Public will give you iron too bad," Tang said.
Tang broached the subject of money and household bills and food for workers on a strike. He said a union would go bust if it paid each worker $50 a week for three months to help them out financially.
Tang said he understood that TCL Credit Union had approached members to sign over their backpay.
"Desist from that," said Tang, a TECU Credit Union committee member. He said car companies, banks and landlords understand that workers will eventually pay them. He suggested that workers borrow from TECU-based close to the Pointe-a-Pierre Petrotrin refinery-and withdraw small sums weekly to cover basic domestic bills. Contacted on Monday, Lisette Weekes, executive assistant at TECU, said while TCL workers are members of TECU, it was difficult to say if they have applied for loans unless one was looking for such data. Just then, three workers brought in a white ice box filled with paratha roti and a case of soft drinks. Back at the strike camp, Tang is telling workers that during struggles in his time, strikers used to stop taxis and ask for $1. "Learn to take insult and cuss. Soldiers have to eat."
To the left of Tang's head hung an old water bottle. That's the kitty for food. Tang said those workers with taxis and maxi-taxis could go out and work to buy fish or green fig so the camp has food. He said during his strikes, the Master Baker used to supply bread, pone and sweet bread every four days. There was ice-cream for children on Sundays. "Is pressure yuh under, you have to enjoy it." Half-hour later, the smell of curried goat is high. Tang urged men who may appear strong in the camp and weak at home to explain to their wives and companions why the strike is necessary, to bring them and their children to the camp for support. "Take yuh cuss when yuh go home," he said, beads of sweat running down his face. He said TCL offering workers individual contracts is meant to weaken the struggle.
Branch president Renaud returns to tell workers that the union is serious about not having any alcohol in the camp."This is a disciplined army. Don't go out and drink and come back. The discipline is what will cause us to win." He said the workers were going to ask those Mayo residents whose water supply, he claimed, were cut off by TCL, to join them in protest from 5 am today.
Company's offer to employees
TCL issued a six-page March 7 revised terms of employment letter to striking workers.
The company said it was offering 6.5 per cent wage increase plus a 1.0 per cent adjustment to wages annually for every $15 million gain over the previous year's gross profit.
The letter stated that an employee would get an adjustment of 9.5 per cent added to their base wage: 2.5, 2.5, 4.5. Immediately upon the resumption of duty, an employee's wage rate would be $83.94 per hour, and that their period of absence would be considered a period of leave without pay.
Included in the package were:
• Heat bonus of $7.50 an hour when the prevailing air temperature is more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit
• Maintenance work inside the plant: $8.50 an hour
• Chargehand bonus: $11.50 an hour
• Height bonus above 60 feet: $7 an hour
• Transport home or allowance for overtime beyond 6.30 pm at Claxton Bay or at Mayo after 5.30 pm: $80
• Disturbance allowance if transferred from Claxton Bay to Mayo or vice versa: $6,700
Those employees who weren't part of the strike have been called scabs.
Fourteen names-seven of them women-are listed on a piece of cardboard hung from a metal bar near the security booth. They are labelled "traitor," "bitches," "outside child," "serpents and "Charlie King."