At least two Petrotrin em­ploy­ees have re­ceived over $4 mil­lion as part of their sev­er­ance pack­ages, as close to 2,000 work­ers have al­ready ac­cept­ed deals from the com­pa­ny.

Just one day af­ter the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) in­junc­tion was over­turned in the Court of Ap­peal, the man­age­ment re­sumed hand­ing out sev­er­ance bun­dles to work­ers. Guardian Me­dia was told that some 1,800 peo­ple have al­ready ac­cept­ed their sev­er­ance pack­ages, in­clud­ing a large num­ber of union mem­bers.

When the In­dus­tri­al Court grant­ed the OW­TU’s in­junc­tion, some 300 non-unionised work­ers had ac­cept­ed sev­er­ance as the union mem­bers were pro­tect­ed by the court de­ci­sion. How­ev­er, once that was va­cat­ed by the Ap­peal Court on Wednes­day night, Petrotrin im­me­di­ate­ly re­sumed send­ing work­ers home. The Ap­peal Court lift­ed the in­junc­tion for one week.

Just be­fore mid­night on Thurs­day, Jus­tice of Ap­peal Char­maine Pem­ber­ton blocked the in­junc­tion award­ed by the In­dus­tri­al Court and fixed the hear­ing to re­sume be­fore a three-mem­ber pan­el of the Ap­peal Court for Oc­to­ber 18.

Last Tues­day, the In­dus­tri­al Court had grant­ed an in­junc­tion to the OW­TU pro­hi­b­it­ing Petrotrin from mov­ing ahead with the ter­mi­na­tion timetable be­fore the court heard an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions mat­ter the union had raised against the ail­ing state oil com­pa­ny. Petrotrin had al­ready hand­ed out close to 500 ter­mi­na­tion let­ters to work­ers last week­end ahead of the in­junc­tion, but those were ren­dered void pend­ing the out­come of the ap­peal yes­ter­day.

A se­nior ex­ec­u­tive with knowl­edge of the ter­mi­na­tions at Petrotrin said top man­agers would walk away with over $2 mil­lion, mid­dle man­agers would take home some $724,500 while oth­ers would get $411, 900 to go home.

Al­though OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get had asked the union mem­bers to refuse the sev­er­ance pack­ages un­til af­ter Oc­to­ber 18, hun­dreds of union mem­bers ac­cept­ed them.

Yes­ter­day, on the Morn­ing Brew on CNC3, head of tran­si­tions, Lisa Ali, gave the time­line of the shut down of the op­er­a­tions and start-up of the new pe­tro­le­um en­ti­ty.

The union did not re­spond to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia about the amount of mem­bers who had ac­cept­ed the sev­er­ance pack­ages but is­sued a me­dia state­ment con­demn­ing Ali.

The OW­TU said that Ali was “de­stroy­ing the lo­cal oil in­dus­try”. The union’s main grouse is that the mat­ter is still be­fore the Ap­peal Court and as such the com­pa­ny should not be talk­ing about the time­lines for roll out of the new or­gan­i­sa­tion. The union called this “dis­re­spect­ful”.

“As far as we are aware, she is not an em­ploy­ee, so who gave her au­thor­i­ty to speak on be­half of Petrotrin?” the OW­TU asked.

“The is­sue of the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence is still be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court, while the in­junc­tion against the ter­mi­na­tions is be­fore the Court of Ap­peal. Please note that the in­junc­tion was on­ly stayed, not re­moved, by the Court of Ap­peal.”

The OW­TU said Ali’s ap­pear­ance on tele­vi­sion on be­half of Petrotrin in­di­cat­ed “dis­dain for the work­ers of Petrotrin.” The union main­tained that clos­ing the re­fin­ery is drag­ging the econ­o­my back­ward.