The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has called for an end to the strike ac­tion out­side the Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd and for the com­pa­ny and the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) to re­turn to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble. The strike start­ed on Tues­day.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the cham­ber said: Our po­si­tion con­tin­ues to be one which does not sup­port, in any way, the threat­ened or re­al shut down of any com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty in this coun­try, as any such in­dus­tri­al ac­tion can on­ly cause dam­age to the coun­try's al­ready frag­ile econ­o­my. The union is de­mand­ing 16 per cent. The com­pa­ny's of­fer is six-and-a-half per cent.

"This fragili­ty has par­tic­u­lar­ly been ev­i­denced by the flail­ing lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor over the past few years. The cham­ber had hoped that there would have been a re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of this sec­tor, as one of the means for stim­u­lat­ing our eco­nom­ic growth. How­ev­er, the cur­rent strike ac­tion by the em­ploy­ees of TCL will on­ly serve to stymie such ef­forts." The cham­ber ex­pressed con­cern over re­ports of short­age of ce­ment in To­ba­go, which, it said, was "caus­ing huge loss­es in rev­enue and prof­it in an econ­o­my which can ill-af­ford such loss­es." The busi­ness body said such rev­enue loss­es run counter to the cham­ber's ef­forts to re­sus­ci­tate the econ­o­my of the sis­ter isle.

"Re­ports from the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the cham­ber al­ready in­di­cate that some con­struc­tion sites have had to shut down owed to this short­age, leav­ing work­ers tem­porar­i­ly un­em­ployed and threat­en­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence. "We there­fore call on the OW­TU to end the cur­rent strike ac­tion im­me­di­ate­ly. We al­so call on the man­age­ment of TCL, along with the union, to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble and set­tle the cur­rent in­dus­tri­al dis­pute through all oth­er chan­nels pro­vid­ed by the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act. "Fail­ing this, the dis­pute should be re­ferred to the In­dus­tri­al Court for ap­pro­pri­ate de­ter­mi­na­tion in the in­ter­est of the peace and sta­bil­i­ty of the con­struc­tion sec­tor and growth of the na­tion­al econ­o­my."