Yvonne Ba­boolal

Min­is­ter of Labour Er­rol McLeod is mak­ing a last-ditch ef­fort to avert strike ac­tion at State-owned Petrotrin this morn­ing, fol­low­ing last Fri­day's break­down of wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union, An­cel Ro­get said the union would serve strike no­tice on the com­pa­ny at 8 am to­day. Fol­low­ing the threats by the suc­ces­sor of the union he once led, McLeod has in­vit­ed the top brass of the union and Petrotrin to meet with him this morn­ing. The meet­ing is sched­uled to take place at the min­istry's South of­fice, St James Street, San Fer­nan­do. Ro­get, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said they would meet with McLeod but that would not pre­vent them from serv­ing strike no­tice. He not­ed that the union's blue shirt army will march to the re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre at 8 am to­day to serve strike no­tice to the com­pa­ny's man­age­ment.

"Mc Leod still has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­vene and set­tle this with­in 96 hours," Ro­get ex­plained. He said ac­cord­ing to the col­lec­tive agree­ment, once no­tice is served, they have 96 hours to re­solve the out­stand­ing is­sues. He said dur­ing that time the com­pa­ny would be able to take down its plant and equip­ment and pro­tect it. He added: "If it is re­solved with­in this 96 hours, we will go back to work. "If not, on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, every work­er from all five bar­gain­ing units-month­ly and hourly/week­ly paid from Petrotrin and Trin­mar and Petrotrin's month­ly rat­ed ju­nior staff-will all go down. We will shut­down the com­pa­ny." Ro­get said the work­ers have the right to legal­ly with­hold their labour for three months. A re­lease from the Min­istry of Labour in­di­cat­ed that meet­ing was be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by McLeod in an at­tempt to avert in­dus­tri­al strike ac­tion at the pro­duc­tion and re­fin­ing op­er­a­tions at Petrotrin.

"Min­is­ter McLeod is of the view that it will be pre­ma­ture for par­ties to have aban­doned the pur­suit of a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions dis­pute, af­ter hav­ing on­ly two meet­ings on Feb­ru­ary 8 and Feb­ru­ary 10 at which at­tempts were made to re­solve their re­spec­tive is­sues, am­i­ca­bly," the state­ment added.

Salary ne­go­ti­a­tions broke down be­tween the union and the com­pa­ny last Fri­day, when the com­pa­ny failed to move be­yond five per cent. In a re­lease, Petrotrin said it has been en­gaged in lengthy ne­go­ti­a­tions re­lat­ing to the term and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ees of the com­pa­ny, cov­ered by five bar­gain­ing units. The com­pa­ny said bi­lat­er­al agree­ment was reached on over 75 per cent of the key items on the five dif­fer­ent col­lec­tive agree­ments, in­clud­ing a gen­er­al in­crease in wages and an en­hanced hous­ing al­lowance.

In light of the pend­ing ac­tion, the Min­istry of En­er­gy has al­so is­sued a re­lease as­sur­ing there is no gas short­age, as pan­ic buy­ing has al­ready start­ed in some ar­eas. "NP con­tin­ues to de­liv­er fu­el and as­sures the trav­el­ling pub­lic sup­plies are be­ing made to all its ser­vice sta­tions," se­nior com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Nali­ni Paras­ram-Ra­jbal­lie stat­ed in the re­lease. (YB)