Sascha Wil­son

Unions sup­port­ing the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union, which is lead­ing a strike at Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL), have sought help from their in­ter­na­tion­al labour com­rades to pre­vent ship­ments of ce­ment from reach­ing this coun­try's shores. Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette re­vealed this yes­ter­day as he joined sev­er­al oth­er trade union heads at the strike camp in front TCL's Clax­ton Bay plant to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ers.

A call was al­so made to gov­ern­ment to use mon­ey from the lat­est Petrotrin oil find to buy out shares in TCL . The strike ac­tion, ini­ti­at­ed af­ter work­ers re­ject­ed the com­pa­ny's 6.5 per cent wage in­crease of­fer, en­tered its 37th day yes­ter­day. The union is de­mand­ing a 12 per cent wage in­crease.

Since the work­ers downed tools on Feb­ru­ary 27, TCL's man­age­ment has been re­ceiv­ing ship­ments of ce­ment and oth­er sup­plies from sub­sidiaries in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica to meet the lo­cal de­mand. The com­pa­ny has al­so start­ed pro­duc­ing ce­ment. An­nisette said the unions will re­sist ef­forts by TCL to use lo­cal ports to bring in ce­ment.

"We made it clear that any at­tempts to do so will re­sult in the to­tal shut­down of both ports." An­nisette said he sought as­sis­tance from the In­ter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion, ask­ing that their unionised crew aboard any ce­ment-trans­port­ing ves­sels bound for T&T turn the ves­sels around.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my con­demned TCL's "de­spi­ca­ble dis­play of an­ti-work­ers sen­ti­ments." Dave Smith of the Na­tion­al Work­ers Union called on work­ers to stop trucks from en­ter­ing Rous­tan Job of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, Lex Lovell of the Steel Work­ers Union, and Kr­ish­na De­onar­ine of the Gov­ern­ment, In­dus­try and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union all ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with the TCL work­ers.