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Monday, August 18, 2025

More burden for taxpayers

by

20170110

In nor­mal cir­cum­stances we would be cel­e­brat­ing the fact that the coun­try avert­ed a po­ten­tial­ly crip­pling Petrotrin strike. Sad­ly, there's lit­tle or noth­ing nor­mal about Petrotrin and lit­tle or noth­ing to cel­e­brate about the agree­ment reached by the Gov­ern­ment, the com­pa­ny's man­age­ment and the OW­TU.

There was a pal­pa­ble sense that most cit­i­zens were keen to see a new kind of out­come to this dis­pute. With Trinidad and To­ba­go's cof­fers emp­ty due to low oil and gas prices, falling pro­duc­tion and a tor­rid 2016 as far as eco­nom­ic per­for­mance is con­cerned, there was hope that the Gov­ern­ment, the OW­TU and Petrotrin's se­nior man­age­ment were ready to put the na­tion­al in­ter­est first in­stead of a quick fix at the tax­pay­er's ex­pense. What we are left with is a pal­pa­ble sense of dis­ap­point­ment.

As we ar­gued pre­vi­ous­ly, this trade dis­pute meant a lot more than a pay in­crease for Petrotrin's work­ers and its im­pact on the com­pa­ny's cur­rent loss­es and heavy debt lev­els. It was about the ex­pec­ta­tion that the Gov­ern­ment would show the right lead­er­ship at the right time, de­ter­mined not to kick the con­fronta­tion to the long grass and to set a new and ma­ture ap­proach to how it han­dles the loss­es and ex­cess­es of our state-owned en­ter­pris­es.

It was al­so about the OW­TU–as the most pow­er­ful union in the coun­try–shed­ding its im­age as the bul­ly boys of trade union­ism and opt­ing for a les­son in civic dis­play, show­ing how unions can al­so put the na­tion first, al­so for the ben­e­fit of their cur­rent and fu­ture mem­bers. And it was al­so about Petrotrin's man­age­ment demon­strat­ing a re­newed rigour and de­ter­mi­na­tion to run the com­pa­ny prop­er­ly and with the in­ter­ests of all, not just its own, at heart.

No doubt those who worked on this deal will claim that it avoid­ed a strike that no one want­ed or could af­ford in the first place. They can al­so claim that the ne­go­ti­a­tions are far from over, as the is­sue of back pay still de­pends on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and per­for­mance gains yet to be agreed.

But let's not beat about the bush: when Petrotrin and its mas­ters give an im­me­di­ate five per cent pay rise just hours in­to a strike, there is lit­tle ex­pec­ta­tion that a mea­sured and thought­ful deal will come out of the next round of con­cil­i­a­tion talks at the In­dus­tri­al Court. In fact, the OW­TU's boss has al­ready sig­nalled that he doesn't ex­pect to leave the talks with­out more.

The deal al­so works as a sig­nal to unions rep­re­sent­ing oth­er state-owned en­ter­prise work­ers and pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees that, at least for them, the good old times of gen­er­ous pay ris­es are here to stay, ir­re­spec­tive of how big is the size of the hole in the Gov­ern­ment's ac­counts, how chal­leng­ing con­di­tions will con­tin­ue to be in the en­er­gy sec­tor and how des­per­ate­ly the coun­try needs a new way of do­ing things if we are to have a tru­ly di­ver­si­fied and mod­ern econ­o­my.

Sad­ly, though, it al­so works as a sig­nal to the rest of the world that we are still a long way away from be­ing a se­ri­ous play­er in the world econ­o­my by fail­ing to adopt good gov­er­nance stan­dards, sen­si­ble pub­lic sec­tor per­for­mance-re­lat­ed pay and ef­fi­cient man­age­ment prac­tices at our state en­ter­pris­es.


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