OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

It’s been a decade since the sud­den shut­down of the Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas, yet the hu­man cost of the clo­sure is still be­ing felt by for­mer em­ploy­ees.

Fam­i­lies re­main fi­nan­cial­ly strained, and many work­ers con­tin­ue to wait for the sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits that were promised. Pres­i­dent of the Steel­work­ers Union of T&T, Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, says the March 11, 2016, clo­sure of the Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas steel plant re­mains one of the most dev­as­tat­ing in­dus­tri­al col­laps­es in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, leav­ing hun­dreds of work­ers strug­gling a decade lat­er.

Speak­ing on the tenth an­niver­sary of the shut­down, Bai­ley de­scribed the man­ner in which the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny ex­it­ed T&T as “the great­est crime against work­ers in the his­to­ry of T&T.”

In 2016, op­er­a­tions at the Arcelor­Mit­tal plant abrupt­ly ceased, dis­plac­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 644 work­ers, some of whom had more than three decades of ser­vice.

Bai­ley said the com­pa­ny failed in its du­ty of care to the work­ers who helped build its suc­cess lo­cal­ly.

“Arcelor­Mit­tal be­came suc­cess­ful off the backs of T&T cit­i­zens and the nat­ur­al re­sources of this coun­try—nat­ur­al gas, wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty,” Bai­ley said. “They had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ex­tend a lev­el of du­ty and care to the work­ers who were the ve­hi­cle that car­ried them to that suc­cess.”

In­stead, he said, long-serv­ing em­ploy­ees were dis­missed with­out com­pen­sa­tion.

“Work­ers with 36 years of ser­vice were sent home with­out a red cent,” Bai­ley said.

He al­so crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment at the time for not in­ter­ven­ing more force­ful­ly to pro­tect em­ploy­ees when the plant closed.

“The gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to take care of its cit­i­zens. When a multi­na­tion­al de­cides to leave, the State must en­sure that cit­i­zens are not left un­done,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Bai­ley, the im­pact of the clo­sure went far be­yond job loss­es.

“Too many of my broth­ers and sis­ters have gone in­to de­pres­sion. Too many lost their homes. Some even took their own lives,” he claimed.

A decade lat­er, Bai­ley said the ma­jor­i­ty of for­mer steel­work­ers re­main un­der­em­ployed or un­em­ployed.

“You can’t just pick up a lay­man off the street,” he said. “That is spe­cialised train­ing for a steel plant. Those work­ers have not been able to tran­si­tion eas­i­ly.

“Many are do­ing what­ev­er they can to sur­vive—dri­ving taxis, cook­ing food—just to put food on the ta­ble,” he said.

Bai­ley said the union fought a long le­gal bat­tle to se­cure pen­sion ben­e­fits for work­ers, though the pay­outs were re­duced due to ear­ly ac­cess penal­ties.

“That means some­one who left at 50 and was sup­posed to re­tire at 60 lost rough­ly 37.5 per cent of their pen­sion,” Bai­ley ex­plained.

Some le­gal mat­ters con­nect­ed to the clo­sure re­main be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court. In one re­cent case, the court ruled in favour of a for­mer work­er who claimed con­struc­tive dis­missal af­ter re­sign­ing to ac­cess ear­ly pen­sion ben­e­fits. She was award­ed just un­der $200,000. De­spite the plant’s clo­sure, Bai­ley said the Steel­work­ers Union has re­mained ac­tive and con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate for work­ers’ rights.

“The union had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to sur­vive. If there is no union, then there is no­body to stand in de­fence of the work­ers,” he said.

Work­ers: They

re­al­ly messed us up

For­mer em­ploy­ee Troy Mas­call de­scribed the im­me­di­ate shock of los­ing his job at Arcelor­Mit­tal. With an eight-month-old mort­gage, a new­born, and two school-aged chil­dren, Mas­call said the news plunged him in­to dis­be­lief and fear.

“It was like a hor­ror movie.”

Mas­call had tak­en out half of the funds for con­struct­ing his home, on­ly to have the re­main­ing amount with­held fol­low­ing the clo­sure. “I had to use my per­son­al funds, even dip­ping in­to my el­dest daugh­ter’s ed­u­ca­tion­al fund. She is now wait­ing for help to con­tin­ue her stud­ies in Cana­da,” he said. The fi­nan­cial strain ex­tend­ed to dai­ly liv­ing costs, mort­gage pay­ments, and ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties. Mas­call de­scribed the decade-long or­deal as “frus­trat­ing” and said it gave him a clear­er un­der­stand­ing of why some peo­ple feel dri­ven to ex­treme mea­sures when faced with such de­spair.

“I ful­ly un­der­stand why a man could com­mit sui­cide,” he said. “When you’re backed against the wall with nowhere to turn, it’s crush­ing. Thank­ful­ly, my faith helped me weath­er the storm.”

Mas­call, like many for­mer work­ers, has tried to adapt, tak­ing on new re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and run­ning a home-based bak­ery to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly. Yet the un­cer­tain­ty and loss of long-term sta­bil­i­ty re­main.

“Re­solv­ing this sit­u­a­tion would be like a fairy­tale come true,” Mas­call said. “We need leg­isla­tive changes and retroac­tive mea­sures to en­sure for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal em­ploy­ees re­ceive the sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits they are owed. These are men and women who risked their lives dai­ly for the com­pa­ny; they de­serve jus­tice and fair com­pen­sa­tion.”

An­oth­er for­mer work­er, Shane Boodoo, who spent about 10 years work­ing in the plant’s melt­ing shop, said the clo­sure al­so left a last­ing im­pact on his life.

“When I heard the news, it was a shock,” Boodoo said. “But it wasn’t the first time the com­pa­ny sent me home. This was the third time, on­ly this time every­body got sent home.”

Boodoo said the ex­pe­ri­ence has had last­ing fi­nan­cial and psy­cho­log­i­cal con­se­quences.

“I nev­er re­al­ly ful­ly re­cov­ered from this,” he said. “Af­ter Arcelor­Mit­tal, I nev­er got a sta­ble job again.”

He said the years fol­low­ing the clo­sure were marked by fi­nan­cial strain and per­son­al hard­ship, in­clud­ing the col­lapse of his mar­riage.

“I got di­vorced and every­thing kind of fell apart. As men, we don’t re­al­ly talk about these things, but it was tough,” he said.

At the time he al­so had a bank loan, which he was forced to re­pay us­ing his sav­ings.

“The bank was call­ing on my phone, and we nev­er got any sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits from the com­pa­ny,” he said.

Boodoo de­scribed the melt­ing shop as one of the tough­est work­ing en­vi­ron­ments in the plant, with ex­treme heat and dan­ger­ous con­di­tions. “You’re ex­posed to tem­per­a­tures over 1,600 de­grees and ex­ces­sive noise,” he said. “When scrap met­al goes in­to the fur­nace, es­pe­cial­ly if it’s wet, it’s like an ex­plo­sion in­side.”

While he said he is phys­i­cal­ly cop­ing, the men­tal ef­fects re­main. “Men­tal­ly I am chal­lenged,” he said. “They re­al­ly messed up work­ers. They messed me up per­son­al­ly.”

For­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal em­ploy­ee Joanette Pariag, who spent more than three decades at the Point Lisas steel plant, said the sud­den clo­sure of the fa­cil­i­ty in 2016 left work­ers emo­tion­al­ly shat­tered and strug­gling to re­build their lives.

Pariag, who worked at the plant for near­ly 36 years in to­tal, be­gin­ning as a tem­po­rary em­ploy­ee be­fore be­com­ing per­ma­nent, said the an­nounce­ment that op­er­a­tions would cease came as a dev­as­tat­ing shock.

“I didn’t even know how to com­pre­hend it. I felt as though the earth be­low me was open­ing up,” she re­called. “You pre­pare for re­tire­ment, every­thing is in the pipeline, and then sud­den­ly it’s all gone. You go to bed and wake up, and the re­al­i­ty is still there.”

At the time, Pariag was a sin­gle moth­er sup­port­ing a daugh­ter who was in her third year of med­ical school, mak­ing the job loss par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult. With the sud­den loss of in­come, Pariag said she had to re­ly on lim­it­ed sav­ings and dras­ti­cal­ly cut back on spend­ing to keep her house­hold afloat. One of the most painful de­ci­sions she faced was tem­porar­i­ly with­draw­ing her daugh­ter from uni­ver­si­ty.

“She was a third-year med­ical stu­dent, and I had no al­ter­na­tive but to stop her in­def­i­nite­ly,” Pariag said. “When you live in the South, and your child is study­ing in the North, the rent alone was a killer. Then there are med­ical books, dai­ly ex­pens­es.”

De­spite the set­back, she said both she and her daugh­ter re­mained de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue the ed­u­ca­tion.

“We talked, and I told her a good ed­u­ca­tion is a step­ping stone to her fu­ture. I said I would sac­ri­fice every­thing I have to en­sure she com­pletes her stud­ies,” she said.

Af­ter the plant’s clo­sure, she said find­ing work at her age proved dif­fi­cult.

“I was 54 at the time. Who is go­ing to hire some­one 54 when there are so many younger peo­ple out there?” she said.

She even­tu­al­ly se­cured a job but had to leave af­ter six months be­cause the po­si­tion re­quired shift work, some­thing she had nev­er done be­fore.

“Com­ing home late at night, the coun­try not safe, I had to give up that job,” she said.

Af­ter an­oth­er pe­ri­od of un­em­ploy­ment, she found more sta­ble em­ploy­ment and slow­ly be­gan re­build­ing her fi­nances to sup­port her daugh­ter’s re­turn to school.

“We ate ba­sic, we bought ba­sic, but every­thing was about her,” she said. “I start­ed pool­ing my sav­ings again so she could go back to Mount Hope.”

Her daugh­ter even­tu­al­ly re­turned to uni­ver­si­ty about nine to ten months lat­er and com­plet­ed her med­ical stud­ies.

Calls for leg­is­la­tion

Mean­while, Bai­ley al­so wel­comed re­cent state­ments by Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste about pro­posed amend­ments to the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act.

The pro­posed leg­isla­tive changes would re­quire com­pa­nies clos­ing op­er­a­tions to ho­n­our sev­er­ance oblig­a­tions to work­ers, pre­vent­ing sce­nar­ios sim­i­lar to the Arcelor­Mit­tal shut­down.

“I hope the Gov­ern­ment moves swift­ly to close those loop­holes,” Bai­ley said.

Re­flect­ing on the broad­er eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions, Bai­ley ar­gued that the clo­sure rep­re­sent­ed a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­dus­tri­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Point Lisas steel com­plex, orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped as part of the coun­try’s in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy in the 1970s, had been seen as a pil­lar of the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

“In hind­sight, the Gov­ern­ment should have in­ter­vened. In oth­er coun­tries where sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions hap­pened, gov­ern­ments stepped in and worked with the com­pa­ny to sus­tain op­er­a­tions,” Bai­ley said.

Look­ing ahead, he urged pol­i­cy­mak­ers to in­tro­duce stronger pro­tec­tions for work­ers, in­clud­ing un­em­ploy­ment in­sur­ance sys­tems sim­i­lar to those used in Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries.

“Multi­na­tion­als come here to ben­e­fit from our nat­ur­al re­sources and our labour,” he said. “The Gov­ern­ment must en­sure that safe­ty nets are in place, so cit­i­zens are pro­tect­ed if com­pa­nies de­cide to leave.”

Bai­ley al­so en­cour­aged young peo­ple con­sid­er­ing in­dus­tri­al trades not to be dis­cour­aged by the ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Fol­low your pas­sion,” he said. “But the Gov­ern­ment must en­sure that the prop­er pro­tec­tions are built in­to fu­ture in­vest­ments, so what hap­pened in 2016 nev­er hap­pens again.”