Sascha Wil­son

As the im­passe be­tween Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) and the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) en­ters a month, the com­pa­ny says it will not re­sume ne­go­ti­a­tions with OW­TU un­til the acts of vi­o­lence end. At a press brief­ing at the Clax­ton Bay port yes­ter­day, TCL's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Sat­nar­ine Bachew said: "The acts of vi­o­lence must stop. The rights of em­ploy­ees must be recog­nised...Those who are strik­ing have rights and we re­spect that. Those who choose to come to work must al­so be re­spect­ed."

Talks be­tween TCL and OW­TU broke down fur­ther last week with the com­pa­ny re­fus­ing to meet with the union, ac­cus­ing them of be­ing ter­ror­ists. This fol­lows sev­er­al acts of vi­o­lence against em­ploy­ees who have re­turned to work. Bachew main­tained that the com­pa­ny could on­ly af­ford a 6.5 per cent wage in­crease, while OW­TU was de­mand­ing a 12 per cent wage in­crease.

Bachew said when they met with Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod on Fri­day they put sev­er­al pro­pos­als on the ta­ble. The min­is­ter sub­se­quent­ly dis­cussed the pro­pos­als with the OW­TU, he said, adding that next week TCL will again meet with the min­is­ter to dis­cuss what progress was made and the way for­ward. "We are very open and very ea­ger to ex­plore any op­tion to reach a con­cil­i­a­tion at this point," he said.

Mean­while, Bachew said, they were "slow­ly but sure­ly op­er­a­tional­is­ing" the Clax­ton Bay plant in at­tempt to re­sume "nor­mal op­er­a­tions." No at­tempt, how­ev­er, has been made to re­sume the Mayo plant since re­sum­ing op­er­a­tions there was more chal­leng­ing, Bachew said. Since the strike be­gan, he said, they had shipped in 25,000 tonnes of ce­ment from TCL's sub­sidiary com­pa­ny in Bar­ba­dos.

The lo­cal month­ly con­sump­tion of ce­ment is 40,000 tonnes. How­ev­er, he said, there had been some lev­el of ce­ment hoard­ing. "Last week we sent 850 tonnes of ce­ment to To­ba­go. The nor­mal con­sump­tion of ce­ment in To­ba­go is 400 tonnes a week, there­fore 850 will tell you that that should last two weeks." How­ev­er, ear­li­er this week, there were re­ports of a ce­ment short­age in To­ba­go, with projects be­ing shut down and peo­ple be­ing sent home.

"Ei­ther the ce­ment con­sump­tion has re­al­ly jumped sig­nif­i­cant­ly or it is be­ing hoard­ed some­where," Bachew added. He said some hard­wares were al­so en­gag­ing in price goug­ing. Bachew said by next week they should re­sume pack­ing ce­ment at the plant and re­sum­ing sales. He re­called that on Fri­day they pro­duced 1,700 tonnes of ce­ment and al­so sold 1,300 tonnes. On a nor­mal day the plant pro­duces 2,500 tonnes of ce­ment.

He ex­pect­ed that a fur­ther 1,500 tonnes would have been sold yes­ter­day. Bachew could not quan­ti­fy TCL's over­all loss­es since the strike. At­tempts to reach OW­TU's pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get were un­suc­cess­ful.