Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is re­ject­ing calls by the Steel Work­ers’ Union of T&T (SWUTT) for a chance at in­put in the re­open­ing of the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal steel plant in Point Lisas by Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny, say­ing the US-backed com­pa­ny is free to hire any cit­i­zen it con­sid­ers suit­able.

“Mr (Tim­o­thy) Bai­ley and his union had ten years to take over the plant or get an in­vestor and failed to do so. My job is to bring in­vest­ment to our coun­try, if some cit­i­zens want to chase out in­vestors, so be it, its their and their chil­dren’s fu­tures that they are de­stroy­ing, not mine or the for­eign in­vestors,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day in re­sponse to the union’s calls at a me­dia con­fer­ence ear­li­er.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the US-based Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um is a pri­vate com­pa­ny and there is no ba­sis for re­strict­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties at its pro­posed Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny plant to for­mer steel work­ers.

“Every cit­i­zen look­ing for em­ploy­ment is en­ti­tled to ap­ply to them for jobs,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Last Mon­day, Ibis Steel of­fi­cial­ly kicked off site re­fur­bish­ment while an­nounc­ing plans to pump an over­all US$750 mil­lion in­to the de­vel­op­ment, with the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate up to 1,000 per­ma­nent jobs.

Yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said it would be un­fair to oth­er cit­i­zens seek­ing em­ploy­ment if op­por­tu­ni­ties at the plant were re­served ex­clu­sive­ly for for­mer steel work­ers. She al­so re­ject­ed the union’s po­si­tion that it should be treat­ed as a stake­hold­er in the project.

“Fur­ther, the steel work­ers union and Mr Bai­ley are not stake­hold­ers in that project so there is no need for ei­ther my­self or Pin­na­cle Steel to en­gage with them,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse came hours af­ter SWUTT pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley called for di­a­logue with Gov­ern­ment and the new plant own­ers, warn­ing that the union want­ed out­stand­ing is­sues con­cern­ing for­mer steel work­ers re­solved am­i­ca­bly rather than through le­gal ac­tion.

Speak­ing at the union’s Cou­va head­quar­ters, Bai­ley said while they wel­comed the re­open­ing of the steel in­dus­try and the po­ten­tial for in­vest­ment and sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment, the work­ers who built the in­dus­try over four decades can­not be left out of its re­vival. He said the union was pre­pared to col­lab­o­rate with the new own­ers, de­spite feel­ing “frozen out” and “slight­ed” as a key stake­hold­er in the re­open­ing of the plant.

He said the union had de­lib­er­ate­ly al­lowed last week’s rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny to take place with­out pub­licly rais­ing its con­cerns, but be­lieves it is now time for the work­ers to have their say.

“The re­open­ing of the steel plant can­not and does not mean that doors must be closed on the peo­ple that built it,” Bai­ley said.

He said the SWUTT has rep­re­sent­ed work­ers through­out the in­dus­try since 1980 and that ex­per­tise should be part of the re­open­ing process. Bai­ley al­so stressed that the union is not op­posed to the new own­ers.

“We are not mon­sters. We are open to col­lab­o­ra­tion, we are open to co­op­er­a­tion,” he said.

He said the union was pre­pared to “for­give” what it con­sid­ers its ex­clu­sion from the ini­tial process and move for­ward, but in­sist­ed the right ap­proach must now be adopt­ed.

He said more than 2,000 steel work­ers were dis­placed fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the in­dus­try, in­clud­ing 644 per­ma­nent Arcelor­Mit­tal work­ers and em­ploy­ees of con­trac­tors who had spent decades work­ing at the plant.

Bai­ley said more than 45 per cent of the union’s for­mer steel work­ers are pre­pared to re­turn to the fa­cil­i­ty and the union has al­ready com­piled in­for­ma­tion on their skills, ar­eas of ex­per­tise and pre­vi­ous de­part­ments.

He ar­gued that this rep­re­sents an im­por­tant re­source for the new own­ers as they re­build the op­er­a­tion.

But one of the union’s biggest con­cerns re­mains the un­re­solved liq­ui­da­tion process in­volv­ing the for­mer own­er, Arcelor­Mit­tal.

Bai­ley said Christo­pher Kelshall was ap­point­ed liq­uida­tor in 2016 and ques­tioned the cur­rent sta­tus of the process.

He said at­tempts to con­tact Kelshall have been un­suc­cess­ful, de­spite hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly used his con­tact in­for­ma­tion for years. The union is al­so de­mand­ing clar­i­ty on the sta­tus of for­mer work­ers who are cred­i­tors in the liq­ui­da­tion process and are owed out­stand­ing debts.

With the plant now re­port­ed­ly un­der new own­er­ship, Bai­ley wants to know what arrange­ments have been made to ad­dress those out­stand­ing claims. He is al­so call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to clar­i­fy whether for­mer steel work­ers will be recog­nised for col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pur­pos­es and whether pro­posed amend­ments to the Re­trench­ment, Sev­er­ance and Ben­e­fit Act will be brought in­to force.

Bai­ley said leg­is­la­tion had been passed in the Sen­ate un­der Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste but had not yet reached the Low­er House. He ar­gued that had the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion been in place in 2016, work­ers who lost their jobs when Arcelor­Mit­tal shut down the plant could have ben­e­fit­ed.

He said the union has writ­ten to Per­sad-Bisses­sar on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, in­clud­ing since she en­tered Gov­ern­ment, seek­ing en­gage­ment on the fu­ture of the steel in­dus­try. He said cor­re­spon­dence sent re­cent­ly was ac­knowl­edged by the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice, but he was un­cer­tain whether the let­ters reached her per­son­al­ly. He made a di­rect ap­peal for a meet­ing with the PM.