The decision by the executive of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU) to accept a nine per cent increase over the period 2008 to 2011 for the 5,000 employees of Petrotrin is worthy of high commendation. The decision led to the calling off of a strike at Petrotrin, which would have had a devastating impact on the local economy and in the micro-economy of the southern half of the country.
At the end of the negotiations, the agreement to increase the salaries of the Petrotrin workers by nine per cent, following the consolidation of the cost of living allowance as well as an increase in other allowances was a win-win situation for both the company and the trade union. In arriving at a settlement on the terms that they did, both the union and the Government negotiators-led by former president general of the OWTU, Labour Minister Errol McLeod-have put the national interest before their own interest.
Such high public-mindedness is to be lauded. But, in real terms, the settlement between the OWTU and Petrotrin also means that the trade union has been able to shatter the strict ceiling that the Government has imposed for wage negotiations for public servants and state enterprises. While various government spokesmen, including Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar herself, have denied that there is, in fact, a five per cent ceiling, in reality not one of the negotiations for public sector or state enterprise workers has been settled with a general salary increase of more than five per cent.
That is until now. The decision by the oil company's negotiators to settle at a general salary increase of nine per cent for workers who are already among the highest paid in the country-if not in the entire Caribbean region-has raised the bar for other trade unions who are negotiating wage increases for public servants and state enterprise employees.
In effect, this must mean that the new ceiling for those employees is no longer five per cent over three years, but is now nine per cent over the same time period. Given the fact that Petrotrin is a 100 per cent state-owned company-whose board is hand-picked entirely by the Cabinet, based on criteria established by the Prime Minister-it would be extremely difficult for the Government to attempt to argue that the ceiling remains at five per cent.
While there is no other trade union in T&T that is as large, as powerful or represents workers in an industry as crucial to the country's future as the OWTU, the other public sector trade unions must have observed how the threat of a strike at Petrotrin concentrated the minds of the state enterprise negotiators and the Cabinet. It could not have been a coincidence, for example, that Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine was the only minister at Thursday's post-Cabinet news conference. This set a precedent for the staging of that news event by the People's Partnership administration and underlined the singular importance of the message that the Government wanted to convey to the population on Thursday night and yesterday morning.
And the message clearly was that Petrotrin is very, very important to T&T primarily because it supplies the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel that allows people to get to and from work and to travel between Tobago and Trinidad and to points further afield. The refinery at Pointe-a-Pierre is also very important because it supplies markets throughout the Eastern Caribbean.
While it is true that starting a strike at the company that operates the country's sole oil refinery on Carnival Saturday would have dampened the spirits at the 2012 festivities, industrial relations laws and practices allow a trade union to keep workers off the job for up to 90 days. The strike at Petrotrin would have quickly transcended Carnival and would have imposed new difficulties on the country. Let us hope that government negotiators and public sector trade unions learn the appropriate industrial relations lessons from the last few days.