At least one busi­ness cham­ber is very con­cerned over in­dus­tri­al ac­tion at the Port of Port-of-Spain, which be­gan yes­ter­day.

Scores of work­ers walked off the job over a range of is­sues, in­clud­ing health and safe­ty con­cerns and stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, which dis­rupt­ed op­er­a­tions.

The walk­out be­gan short­ly af­ter 7 am, with work­ers head­ing to their union, the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU), lo­cat­ed on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.

The work­ers’ ac­tion mir­rors strikes in the Unit­ed States, where near­ly 50,000 port work­ers launched a strike last Tues­day, dis­rupt­ing op­er­a­tions on the East­ern Seaboard and Gulf Coast ports.

New re­ports in the US said the stop­page is af­fect­ing the flow of im­ports and ex­ports and said the strikes could be­come the most dis­rup­tive in decades.

At SWW­TU Hall, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette told work­ers that the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion could cost the port mil­lions, po­ten­tial­ly af­fect­ing over 80 per cent of its rev­enue.

“It will cause sig­nif­i­cant dam­age. The port gen­er­ates most of its rev­enue from re­ceiv­ing, stor­ing, and de­liv­er­ing car­go, and this op­er­a­tional de­part­ment is now af­fect­ed—un­for­tu­nate­ly but un­der­stand­ably—due to the fail­ure to de­liv­er on promis­es made to the work­ers. I es­ti­mate that about 85 per cent of the port’s rev­enue, which could amount to mil­lions of dol­lars, is at risk. How­ev­er, we must not blame the work­ers; they are not at fault,” An­nisette said.

Mean­while, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Port of Port-of-Spain, Robert Ram­sub­hag, said op­er­a­tions had al­ready been im­pact­ed by the work­ers’ walk­out.

In a me­dia re­lease, Ram­sub­hag said the port was op­er­at­ing at lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of the full com­ple­ment of labour. He said ves­sel op­er­a­tions, West Gate op­er­a­tions, and ter­mi­nal load­ing and of­fload­ing were af­fect­ed.

How­ev­er, An­nisette said the work­ers did not in­ten­tion­al­ly set out to trou­ble busi­ness own­ers and cit­i­zens.

“The work­ers, who have been frus­trat­ed by bro­ken promis­es over the last two or three years, have reached their break­ing point. The pres­sure has burst their pipes, and they have come to the union pres­i­dent to voice their con­cerns, which is their right,” he said.

Yes­ter­day was not the first time work­ers walked off the port. Ear­li­er this year, 1,000 work­ers walked off the job, giv­ing port man­age­ment sev­en days to ad­dress health and safe­ty is­sues and agree to a 12 per cent wage in­crease.

The work­ers yes­ter­day said the is­sues still per­sist.

An­nisette said the union is will­ing to meet with port man­age­ment.

The union could not say if the work­ers would stay off the job.

Co­or­di­na­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), Jai Lelad­hars­ingh, has de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “very con­cern­ing.”

“It is very con­cern­ing be­cause it is go­ing to cost busi­ness own­ers and en­ter­pris­es a lot of mon­ey. The longer their car­go re­mains at the port, the more de­mur­rage costs they will in­cur. We urge the Port Au­thor­i­ty and the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union to sit down, stay at the ta­ble, re­solve their dif­fer­ences, and come to a res­o­lu­tion,” Lelad­hars­ingh said.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Vashti Guyadeen, al­so said the cham­ber is aware of the “chal­lenges” at the Port of Port-of-Spain. She added that the cham­ber is gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion from its mem­bers to de­ter­mine the ex­tent of the im­pact on busi­ness­es.