Sascha Wil­son

Em­ploy­ees and ex-em­ploy­ees of Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) have been protest­ing over the past six weeks over the com­pa­ny’s non-pay­ment of out­stand­ing mon­ey owed to them.

Twice a week, per­ma­nent and ca­su­al work­ers, ex-work­ers and re­tirees have been march­ing in front of the Clax­ton Bay com­pound hop­ing to get man­age­ment’s at­ten­tion.

While the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union and man­age­ment are ex­pect­ed to meet to­day to dis­cuss the is­sue, work­ers said they de­cid­ed to keep up the protest ac­tion be­cause they had been giv­en false promis­es too many times.

Re­tired per­ma­nent work­er Learie Mike said the union took the mat­ter to court in 2012 and won, but yet the com­pa­ny had not paid them.

Claim­ing that they were owned Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA), Gain­shar­ing and oth­er pay­ments, he re­called that back in 2012 the work­ers had a 90-day strike.

He said, “The com­pa­ny had made an agree­ment with the union that they go­ing to take 20 per cent of the back­pay from the ca­su­als and the per­ma­nent work­ers to se­cure job se­cu­ri­ty. It was said it was for job se­cu­ri­ty and af­ter that was paid the ma­jor­i­ty of ca­su­als were sent home and to­day ca­su­als still stand­ing out here. (They) nev­er got their 20 per cent that they took from them and they lost their job al­so.”

Say­ing that his faith had kept him strong, Mike com­plained that many of them had died and while their fam­i­lies would in­her­it the mon­ey, it was not fair to them (em­ploy­ees).

“I could re­mem­ber a spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion when I was speak­ing to a guy who work with me for 34 years and he was ask­ing me when we will he get this mon­ey and that was just in De­cem­ber and the be­gin­ning of Jan­u­ary he died from COVID so it is sad to think about some­body wait­ing for their mon­ey and they die and they can’t get their mon­ey and all these things have to rest on man­age­ment shoul­ders,” he added.

He said he was hop­ing that to­day the com­pa­ny would be hon­est and tell the union whether pay­ments would be made by the end of the year.

“They said they will­ing to pay in De­cem­ber (that) they have the mon­ey and then they re­nege on that again so we are just hop­ing for the best,” he said.

An­oth­er re­tiree, Ken­rick Top­py, said he was tired of be­ing giv­en the run-around.

He said, “The com­pa­ny chang­ing and this is the end­ing era of Trinidad Ce­ment and the be­gin­ning of Trinidad Ce­mex and we still singing and danc­ing and noth­ing not hap­pen­ing. To­mor­row they say they hav­ing a meet­ing I hope to­mor­row will be the end of every­thing,” he added.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to TCL but up to late Tues­day there was no re­sponse.