In this first day of the Gov­ern­ment's re­treat, we ex­pect that it will find the grit to deal with the self-serv­ing bul­ly in our play­ground. These are dark times and we must do the right thing � not the easy thing.

The OW­TU promis­es to serve no­tice of strike ac­tion against Petrotrin to­mor­row and has placed the re­moval of Petrotin'sPres­i­dent as a con­di­tion of set­tle­ment. The threat is for­mi­da­ble. We need a coura­geous stand and the Gov­ern­ment must sup­port the Com­pa­ny's lead­er­ship and its 0-0-0 of­fer.

If we look to Bar­ba­dos's biggest union, the BWU, we will see sev­er­al in­stances where they have ac­cept­ed 0% - even a full mora­to­ri­um on salary in­creas­es at Amer­i­can Air­lines. Clear­ly, this is not busi­ness as usu­al, but the OW­TU it­self recog­nis­es that Petrotrin is not busi­ness as usu­al (see yes­ter­day's let­ter to The Guardian from Ozzi War­wick). In its pro­gres­sive wis­dom, the BWU has recog­nised that the re­al fight is for sur­vival.

In 2015, Petrotrin was the third largest na­tion­al tax­pay­er. But these tax­es are not paid against prof­its, but against rev­enues. The Com­pa­ny has been mak­ing sub­stan­tial loss­es since 2014,with the wage bill rep­re­sent­ing about 14% of the sus­tained loss­es.

Yet, Mr Ro­get's re­sponse in last week's emer­gency press con­fer­ence is to promise a strike that "... will not be able to fu­el the econ­o­my... The econ­o­my will shut down!", stat­ing that this is the on­ly op­tion avail­able un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act. This is un­true � the con­cil­i­a­tion process is not ex­haust­ed and the break­down can be re­ferred to the same In­dus­tri­al Court, whose in­tegri­ty the OW­TU pub­licly de­fend­ed a cou­ple of weeks ago in a num­ber of paid ad­ver­tise­ments.

A care­ful lis­ten­ing to Mr Ro­get will al­so un­cov­er a bla­tant dis­re­gard for the no­ble prin­ci­ples that Mr Ro­get es­pous­es with im­puni­ty:

�2 He claims that "every­one else" got 14% wage set­tle­ments in the 2011-2014 pe­ri­od. But ac­cord­ing to the Court's records, on­ly 25% of the OW­TU's agree­ments for years falling with­in this pe­ri­od were 14% or above. The oth­er 75% av­er­aged at less than 8.5%.

�2 He makes ac­cu­sa­tions of "cor­rup­tion, malfea­sance, nepo­tism and bad gov­er­nance" and then iron­i­cal­ly pro­ceeds to be­rate the Gov­ern­ment for not ful­fill­ing "its du­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty" when "... the present gov­ern­ment, the PNM, ben­e­fit­ted" af­ter the OW­TU trav­elled the "length and breadth of Trinidad & To­ba­go, cam­paign­ing". Ro­get con­cludes that there will be "a very high po­lit­i­cal price to pay". This, sounds like unashamed, dis­af­fect­ed crony­ism.

�2 Mr Ro­get makes calls "in the in­ter­est of eq­ui­ty, fair­ness and de­cen­cy" and then de­mands the sum­ma­ry dis­missal of the Pres­i­dent and em­ploy­ee, Fitzroy Hare­wood. So, doesn't Hare­wood de­serve to be treat­ed in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice and good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions? If shut­ting the coun­try down to de­ny Mr Hare­wood these rights isn't harsh and op­pres­sive, then what is?

In­ci­den­tal­ly, the last time that the Court ruled on an un­fair ter­mi­na­tion against a Petrotrin man­ag­er, it award­ed a land­mark $2,218,800. Mr Ro­get ought to re­mem­ber � it was his union who took the case and would have earned a nice cut of that judg­ment.

In the one plus year of Hare­wood's lead­er­ship, Petrotrin's loss­es have halved, even though its rev­enue is half of what it was three years ago.

Mr Row­ley and Cab­i­net take heart: find the courage to do the right thing.