Sasha Wil­son

Just days af­ter 12 work­ers were re­trenched from Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd, the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) is ac­cus­ing the com­pa­ny of re­plac­ing per­ma­nent work­ers with con­tract work­ers. Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at TCL’s car park in Clax­ton Bay yes­ter­day, OW­TU’s chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer Lin­don Men­doza ac­cused the com­pa­ny of “union-bust­ing” and cal­lous­ness to­wards T&T laws. “I mean that Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd al­though it is a lo­cal com­pa­ny it has for­eign man­age­ment and for­eign own­er­ship in con­trol of the as­sets and op­er­a­tion of TCL. What they are do­ing is that they are dis­re­spect­ing the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go and they are dis­re­spect­ing the work­ers and by ex­ten­sion the union, OW­TU.”

Not­ing that the main is­sue fac­ing work­ers is re­trench­ment, he said be­tween 2018 to present 56 per­ma­nent work­ers have been re­trenched. Men­doza said there were cur­rent­ly 200 plus per­ma­nent work­ers, but the work­force in­clu­sive of con­trac­tors, tem­po­rary and ca­su­al, is about 400. Ex­plain­ing that re­trench­ment is an ex­er­cise that a com­pa­ny could en­gage in if there is sur­plus-labour, he said TCL can­not put for­ward that rea­son as the com­pa­ny has sev­er­al va­can­cies. “Notwith­stand­ing this clear and ob­vi­ous fact, the com­pa­ny has still en­gaged in an ex­er­cise of re­trench­ment which the union can on­ly term as union-bust­ing where the com­pa­ny is on a cam­paign to ter­mi­nate per­ma­nent work­ers in favour of hir­ing con­trac­tors and con­tract work­ers with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. And we are say­ing this morn­ing that that is wrong, it is moral­ly wrong, and it is un­law­ful­ly to do so be­cause the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act clear­ly states that the on­ly rea­son or the on­ly cri­te­ria a com­pa­ny can use to ini­ti­ate a re­trench­ment ex­er­cise is sur­plus labour and we are say­ing that the com­pa­ny does not have sur­plus labour at this time and there­fore they can­not in­sti­tute a re­trench­ment ex­er­cise.”

Men­doza said in­for­ma­tion reach­ing him just be­fore the press con­fer­ence was that TCL in­tends to shut down the pack­ing sec­tion of the plant, TPL. He said 28 per­ma­nent work­ers and 17 ca­su­al work­ers would be af­fect­ed.

“And what their in­ten­tion is, is to con­tract out the jobs done by this plant to an­oth­er com­pa­ny and these bags will be brought in from Brazil, the in­for­ma­tion that I have.”

Con­cern­ing the 12 work­ers, the union was served with a no­tice on Jan­u­ary 6 and has since writ­ten to the com­pa­ny re­quest­ing a meet­ing on Fri­day but so far the com­pa­ny has not re­spond­ed. He said the let­ter was al­so copied to Labour Min­is­ter Steven Mc Clashie.

If there is no res­o­lu­tion, he said the union in­tends to file trade dis­putes with the min­is­ter and “progress those trade dis­putes to the lev­el of the In­dus­tri­al Court for res­o­lu­tion.” How­ev­er, he asked that Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon take care­ful note of the prac­tices of the com­pa­ny.

Not­ing the re­cent is­sue with Rock Hard Ce­ment over a pol­i­cy im­ple­ment­ed by the min­istry, the Union Rep said the in­ten­tion of any poli­cies or ini­tia­tives to lo­cal sup­plies is to en­cour­age growth and de­vel­op­ment of the or­gan­i­sa­tion lo­cal­ly and by ex­ten­sion, the ben­e­fit would be for­eign ex­change and em­ploy­ment in the lo­cal sec­tor.

Re­trenched work­er Rox­anne Hold­er-Si­mon who had 25 years of ser­vice and worked in the Ac­counts/Payable Sec­tion was grate­ful to the union for their in­ter­ven­tion. Hold­er-Si­mon said, “I have five kids, it will put some fi­nan­cial strain on me but I be­lieve in the Lord Je­sus and I know that He will pro­vide. De­spite this chal­lenge I see a sil­ver lin­ing at the end of it.” An­oth­er work­er Keron Whiskey who was em­ployed as a welder for the past 11 years is con­cerned about how he will pro­vide for his fam­i­ly. “This no­tice came at, I must say, an in­ap­pro­pri­ate time dur­ing this COVID pe­ri­od. It cer­tain­ly im­pact­ed my fam­i­ly life in a very, very, dra­mat­ic way. I have a young son, he’s eight-years-old to send to school. I have oth­er com­mit­ments and this def­i­nite­ly has a se­ri­ous im­pact on my fam­i­ly life and of course mov­ing for­ward to find em­ploy­ment dur­ing a time like now dur­ing the COVID pe­ri­od.”

While the com­pa­ny has classed them as sur­plus-labour, Whiskey said there was no sur­plus labour in the de­part­ment he worked, but there were con­tract work­ers do­ing the same jobs as the per­ma­nent work­ers. He is hop­ing to get jus­tice in the courts. Con­tact­ed for a com­ment, TCL’s Janelle Collins in an email re­sponse stat­ed, “At this point, we choose to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and we will re­spond when we deem it ap­pro­pri­ate.”