Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Steel Work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SWUTT) says the ma­jor­i­ty of steel­work­ers from the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal plant re­main out of work and would be in­ter­est­ed in re­turn­ing to the plant be­ing sold to TT Iron and Steel, but SWUTT wants to know the sell­ing price.

SWUTT pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley con­firmed this yes­ter­day. This fol­lowed news that the TT Iron and Steel com­pa­ny signed a sale and pur­chase agree­ment to ac­quire the Point Lisas steel plant for­mer­ly run by Arcelor­Mit­tal. The plant closed in 2016 and went in­to liq­ui­da­tion with some 600 plus work­ers be­com­ing job­less.

Bai­ley said: “SWUTT has con­tin­ued do­ing great work in oth­er sec­tors and at the In­dus­tri­al Court. We’re one of the few unions to get more than four per cent for work­ers from a state-owned en­ti­ty NFM—nine per cent for one pe­ri­od.”

“But our steel in­dus­try mem­bers were our core and they’re still mem­bers al­though some strug­gle to re­main fi­nan­cial due to not be­ing gain­ful­ly em­ployed. How­ev­er, SWUTT con­tin­ues to rep­re­sent them to date.”

Bai­ley said the ma­jor­i­ty of work­ers from the pre­vi­ous steel plant re­main out of jobs.

“They hus­tle do­ing jobs as they come to put food on the ta­ble and pay bills. Un­like Petrotrin and TSTT work­ers these work­ers nev­er re­ceived any sev­er­ance. On­ly a hand­ful were for­tu­nate to mi­grate to get jobs.”

On whether all com­mit­ments to work­ers had been ho­n­oured fol­low­ing the plant’s clo­sure, Bai­ley said: “Ho­n­our what com­mit­ments? Arcelor­Mit­tal was al­lowed to dump cit­i­zens and leave our shores with­out re­sis­tance by the lead­ers of this coun­try.

“They have been al­lowed to un­der­take a vol­un­tary liq­ui­da­tion un­der cir­cum­stances where their sis­ter com­pa­nies make up 87 per cent of the cred­i­tors. To date no work­er has been paid a cent for their years of ser­vice with the com­pa­ny (some 36 years) from the bil­lion dol­lar com­pa­ny Arcelor­Mit­tal.”

Bai­ley said the steel work­ers re­ceived no sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits and the Gov­ern­ment failed mis­er­ably to en­sure that leg­is­la­tion was passed to rec­ti­fy this wrong and pre­vent it from ever hap­pen­ing to oth­er cit­i­zens.

Bai­ley said SWUTT isn’t aware of TT Iron’s plan for the steel plant, “be­cause they have cho­sen not to share or even com­mu­ni­cate with the most recog­nised body for work­ers in this in­dus­try…which is their de­ci­sion to make.

“On the ques­tion of their hir­ing and not giv­ing any pref­er­ence to the work­ers that built this in­dus­try and were treat­ed the way they were by the pre­vi­ous op­er­a­tors, this may just be an in­sight in­to the mind­set of the peo­ple that in­tend to ac­quire and run the fa­cil­i­ty,” said Bai­ley.

But he said based on for­mer work­ers’ em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion and cir­cum­stances, “I think the ma­jor­i­ty of work­ers will be in­ter­est­ed in re­turn­ing to what was their liveli­hood.”

“We ob­vi­ous­ly want to know how much the plant is be­ing sold for as the cred­i­tors should know what could pos­si­bly be sal­vaged and paid to them from the sale.”

Bai­ley added, “SWUTT and its mem­bers would be at Labour Day to high­light the con­tin­ued ne­glect of the work­ing class by Par­lia­ment with lack of amend­ments to leg­is­la­tion that does not serve the in­ter­est of cit­i­zens and work­ers—and we al­so need to ask the cur­rent At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to right the wrong that has been done to steel work­ers in T&T as he is now sup­posed to be the AG of the peo­ple. All we have ever asked for is fair­ness and eq­ui­ty.”