All the crit­i­cisms of the de­ci­sion of the OW­TU to take strike ac­tion against Petrotrin seek to fo­cus on the cost to the com­pa­ny if it ac­cepts the union's pro­pos­al. No at­tempt has been made to ex­am­ine the cost to Petrotrin, and the coun­try, if a strike is ac­tu­al­ly em­barked up­on.

The cost to the com­pa­ny is pro­ject­ed to be at the out­side ap­prox­i­mate­ly $165 mil­lion in re­cur­rent per­son­nel ex­pens­es and $400 mil­lion in ar­rears, a one-off ex­pense. These sums would be eas­i­ly and quick­ly re­cov­er­able by the com­pa­ny once it re­turns to nor­mal op­er­a­tions.

The loss­es to the com­pa­ny, and the coun­try, for a nine­ty day strike, based on re­ports in the me­dia of the com­pa­ny's rev­enue, if the fig­ures are re­li­able, would be in the re­gion of $4 bil­lion, none of which would be re­cov­er­able now or in the fu­ture.

Now, which one makes sense–give the work­ers a salary in­crease cost­ing less than 10 per cent of the loss­es ac­cru­ing from a strike or main­tain a hard line as ad­vo­cat­ed by per­sons who have nev­er strug­gled for any­thing in their lives and re­al­ly place the com­pa­ny's vi­a­bil­i­ty at risk.

Peo­ple who are in­sist­ing that the work­ers should not be get­ting a salary in­crease have lit­tle un­der­stand­ing of what strug­gle is about and thus will not ac­cept that some­times peo­ple have to stand up for what they be­lieve in, even at great cost to them­selves.

Karan Ma­habirs­ingh

Cou­va