For­mer work­ers at­tached to the Arcelor­Mit­tal Steel plant in Point Lisas want to be­lieve that Wednes­day’s an­nounce­ment of the sale and pur­chase agree­ment for the plant is good news, but they are con­cerned about the lack of in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to the deal.

Guardian Me­dia was told that news of the plant’s pos­si­ble re­open­ing was seen as a pos­i­tive but Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, pres­i­dent of Steel Work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go, said work­ers are con­cerned that when the plant is restart­ed they will once again be left out.

Bai­ley said that one of his mem­bers sent him an ex­cerpt from TT Iron Steel Com­pa­ny Ltd’s re­lease where the com­pa­ny an­nounced the deal to ac­quire the fa­cil­i­ty, which left them won­der­ing if for­mer work­ers would be con­sid­ered.

The ex­cerpt stat­ed, “TT Iron does not have hir­ing pref­er­ences, the com­pa­ny is an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty firm. Em­ploy­ees will be hired based on their re­spec­tive skills and com­pe­ten­cy lev­els.”

That note was in re­sponse to the ques­tion, “Will pref­er­ence be giv­en to for­mer em­ploy­ees?”

Bai­ley added that the union is in the dark about the deal and the plans for the plant as he said it had not been con­tact­ed by TT Iron.

Bai­ley added that the union was al­so cu­ri­ous about the lim­it­ed de­tails giv­en in deal, as work­ers were still reel­ing from the fact that Arcelor­Mit­tal sud­den­ly in 2016, leav­ing work­ers with no rec­om­pense. He al­so not­ed that to date there had been no amend­ment to laws to pre­vent a re-oc­cur­rence of such, leav­ing the union and work­ers wary that any new com­pa­ny could shut down the plant and leave them with­out com­pen­sa­tion again.

“They keep on push­ing these work­ers. Work­ers hear­ing that the plant go­ing to re­open, ob­vi­ous­ly the first re­ac­tion would be one of joy but when you re­al­ly ex­am­ine how it ap­pears right now, the signs are not good,” said Bai­ley, “We are try­ing to be op­ti­mistic, but the signs are not good.”

In the re­lease an­nounc­ing the ac­qui­si­tion deal, TT Iron stat­ed, “This is a pri­vate trans­ac­tion, bound by con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ments.”