DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) has de­clined to say whether it sup­ports the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to des­ig­nate 15 no-protest zones across Trinidad and To­ba­go, dis­tanc­ing it­self from a grow­ing dis­pute that has seen 13 trade unions threat­en le­gal ac­tion over the mea­sure.

The re­stric­tions, in­tro­duced dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SOE), have drawn crit­i­cism from a coali­tion of unions call­ing it­self the Pro­gres­sive In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions. The group has ar­gued that the des­ig­nat­ed zones could un­der­mine work­ers’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to protest and as­sem­ble.

How­ev­er, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get stopped short of join­ing the crit­i­cism when ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue.

Ro­get spoke ex­clu­sive­ly with Guardian Me­dia at Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, where he at­tend­ed a sit­ting of the Sen­ate to ob­serve de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing and Guaracara Re­fin­ing Vest­ing) Amend­ment Bill.

Asked whether the OW­TU sup­ports or op­pos­es the no-protest zones, Ro­get did not pro­vide a di­rect an­swer. In­stead, he em­pha­sised the union’s close work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the Gov­ern­ment and its fo­cus on ad­vanc­ing work­ers’ in­ter­ests.

The vet­er­an trade union leader said the labour move­ment’s strug­gle ex­tends be­yond pub­lic demon­stra­tions and can take many forms.

“We con­tin­ue to share a com­mon in­ter­est with all of the trade unions and that is the com­mon­al­i­ty in strug­gle and al­so recog­nise that, you know, every­body feel­ing the same pain and there­fore all of us, our mis­sion has to be to be able to de­fend work­ers.

“And I did say and I con­tin­ue to main­tain from where we sit, the strug­gle takes on many dif­fer­ent ways, shapes and forms. And, there­fore, it re­quires in­no­v­a­tive means of tack­ling those is­sues.”

The com­ments come amid grow­ing de­bate with­in the labour move­ment, with some unions tak­ing a more con­fronta­tion­al stance to­wards the Gov­ern­ment while oth­ers have adopt­ed a more co­op­er­a­tive ap­proach.

De­spite those dif­fer­ing po­si­tions, Ro­get re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the trade union move­ment is di­vid­ed.

He said work­ers across the coun­try con­tin­ue to face many of the same chal­lenges and main­tained that labour or­gan­i­sa­tions re­main unit­ed in their broad­er ob­jec­tives.

“As we con­tin­ue to fo­cus on the pos­i­tive, I think that even­tu­al­ly all of the cries, hurt and pain and so on will go away and peo­ple, for all of their con­cerns, shall be—not will, shall be—ad­dressed in due course.”

Ro­get ac­knowl­edged that the OW­TU re­mains a com­mit­ted mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment’s Coali­tion of In­ter­ests, an al­liance that played a key role in the lead-up to the gen­er­al elec­tion.

He en­cour­aged oth­er labour or­gan­i­sa­tions to work along­side the coali­tion, ar­gu­ing that en­gage­ment with the Gov­ern­ment has al­ready be­gun to yield re­sults for work­ers.

“Come with us, man. The OW­TU has al­ways led the way. We have nev­er mis­led any­body.

“At the end of the day, we speak not on­ly on be­half of our mem­ber­ship, we speak on be­half of all of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Those with a voice, those with­out a voice, those who have a voice and are afraid to use it.

“But our com­men­tary has to be very time­ly and pru­dent and well thought out.”

The OW­TU has been among the strongest sup­port­ers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-led ad­min­is­tra­tion since its elec­tion vic­to­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly on is­sues af­fect­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor and state-owned en­ter­pris­es.

Ro­get al­so praised the ad­min­is­tra­tion for its sup­port of the union and its ef­forts to ad­dress long­stand­ing is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers and the en­er­gy sec­tor.

At the same time, he launched a po­lit­i­cal at­tack on the op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), ar­gu­ing that the par­ty’s record demon­strat­ed a lack of com­mit­ment to work­ers’ in­ter­ests.

He warned work­ers against sup­port­ing the PNM in fu­ture elec­tions and sug­gest­ed that the coun­try’s labour move­ment had ben­e­fit­ed from the change in gov­ern­ment.