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Monday, February 24, 2025

Trinmar retirees continue protest for outstanding benefits

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716 days ago
20230310
Trinmar and Petrotrin retirees during a placard protest outside the former Trinmar headquarters in Point Fortin (now under Heritage Petroleum Company) yesterday, demanding outstanding payments for profit sharing and medical benefits.

Trinmar and Petrotrin retirees during a placard protest outside the former Trinmar headquarters in Point Fortin (now under Heritage Petroleum Company) yesterday, demanding outstanding payments for profit sharing and medical benefits.

Though their num­bers are dwin­dling, Petrotrin Trin­mar re­tirees con­tin­ue their strug­gle for out­stand­ing ben­e­fits.

Stand­ing out­side the com­pound of the old Petrotrin Trin­mar head­quar­ters, now un­der Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, the re­tirees held an­oth­er demon­stra­tion yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing their strug­gle for their med­ical plan, sav­ings plan and prof­it shar­ing ben­e­fits over the past five years, they say some 600 re­tirees have died.

Fear­ing that they will suf­fer the same fate be­fore they get their ben­e­fits, spokesman An­tho­ny Richards said since their pre­vi­ous protest last year, 45 re­tirees have died.

Boast­ing that the Petrotrin med­ical plan was the best in Caribbean, he be­lieves that many of the re­tirees who passed on may have still been alive if the med­ical plan was still ac­tive.

“Enough is enough, so we come to high­light our plights. One sav­ing plan mon­ey. The com­pa­ny has some sav­ing plan mon­ey that ac­cu­mu­lat­ed from 2018 when we close off and so far noth­ing about the sav­ing plan mon­ey. Since 2018 over 600 peo­ple die, so that mean that sav­ing plan mon­ey who left that, that gone through.

Our prof­it shar­ing 2009-2010 that was set­tled and up to now we can­not get that mon­ey. The In­dus­tri­al Court high­light that and we won that case and up to now we can­not get that mon­ey yet and all these guys die, the 600 and change. Like they wait­ing for every­body else to die. We want that mon­ey now.”

When Petrotrin closed, he said, they re­ceived med­ical for two years, then an­oth­er plan was im­ple­ment­ed but it flopped.

Richards said an­oth­er is­sue is that they nev­er re­ceived their job de­scrip­tion which af­fect­ed their sev­er­ance pack­age.

“We were hourly/week­ly and most of the wider Petrotrin were month­ly paid. I made 18 years per­ma­nent. The man who made per­ma­nent 18 years in the wider Petrotrin got $526,000 for his sev­er­ance. I get 276, be­cause I am hourly/week­ly. So we get blows in that,” he said.

Un­sat­is­fied with the rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union, he said they want to re­ceive their ben­e­fits be­fore May. An­oth­er re­tiree An­tho­ny Ou­dit sug­gest­ed that if the au­thor­i­ties refuse to re­sume their med­ical plan, they should re­im­burse them for their con­tri­bu­tions over the years they worked. While Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um could not be reached for a com­ment, the OW­TU in­di­cat­ed that the mat­ters are be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court.


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