The OW­TU's lead­er­ship did not sur­prise any­one by serv­ing Petrotrin with the strike no­tice it had been promis­ing the coun­try the past few weeks. The added bonus for the union–the pro­longed dra­ma dom­i­nat­ing more news head­lines in an un­cer­tain econ­o­my.

The pre­dictabil­i­ty of it all does not make the out­come any less dis­ap­point­ing. De­spite the protes­ta­tions, their move ap­pears to be less about the union re­al­ly car­ing for its cur­rent and fu­ture work­ers and more about pow­er and op­por­tunism.

Now the na­tion has just a few days be­fore it ei­ther sees its gas sta­tions run­ning out of fu­el or, Petrotrin and the Gov­ern­ment ca­pit­u­lat­ing to the OW­TU's de­mands for wage in­creas­es the State-owned com­pa­ny can hard­ly af­ford. In oth­er words, whichev­er way these con­fronta­tions go, it is us–the tax­pay­ers–who nor­mal­ly end up pay­ing dear­ly.

With the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion emerg­ing from re­treat on the day the strike ac­tion was served, one of the first or­ders of busi­ness is the meet­ing with Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus and the lead­er­ship of Petrotrin and the OW­TU. Al­though ex­pec­ta­tions are low, we sin­cere­ly hope that the meet­ing will be pro­duc­tive and yield what is best for the coun­try.

That's be­cause, as this news­pa­per stat­ed a num­ber of times al­ready, this dis­pute goes much fur­ther than just a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion be­tween a trade union and a com­pa­ny. It touch­es is­sues that have the abil­i­ty to de­fine Trinidad and To­ba­go's eco­nom­ic fu­ture and by de­f­i­n­i­tion, its pros­per­i­ty.

Let's be clear�this is about an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op an ap­proach that al­lows us all to share the ben­e­fits of our oil rev­enues, not just a few priv­i­leged work­ers. It is al­so about cre­at­ing a new in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions mod­el that re­places the shout­ing and the threats with grown-up dis­cus­sions based on pay growth in re­turn for high­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy.

This fun­da­men­tal change of ap­proach is need­ed not on­ly be­cause it makes sense–just look at Ger­many's mod­el–but be­cause we need to stop dream­ing of a re­turn to high oil prices as the tem­po­rary quick fix to the struc­tur­al cracks in our econ­o­my.

So far the de­bate over the Petrotrin dis­pute by some of its key stake­hold­ers has been less than ed­i­fy­ing and in­spir­ing. To­day Ms Bap­tiste-Primus has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take the first and fun­da­men­tal steps to­wards a his­tor­i­cal change in how these mat­ters are dealt with and how the gov­ern­ment looks af­ter the as­sets we en­trust it to grow on our be­half.

His­to­ry is nev­er kind to those in pow­er who opt­ed for a quick fix for po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy. They usu­al­ly come un­done, even­tu­al­ly. Giv­en where we are, the route of a quick fix would be both de­plorable and lazy.

On the eve of Epiphany, we tru­ly hope all con­cerned will have their own mo­ment of dis­cov­ery and work to­wards a long-term, sen­si­ble and tru­ly pa­tri­ot­ic so­lu­tion to the dis­pute.

Fail­ing that (and the omens are not good), the Gov­ern­ment should think twice be­fore show­er­ing OW­TU with gifts in the vain hope the prob­lem will go away. We are sure Ms Bap­tiste-Primus knows that wis­dom some­times is al­so about be­ing res­olute.