Strik­ing work­ers at Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) will stand their ground un­til the com­pa­ny de­cides to im­prove its terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment. An­cel Ro­get, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU), was ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the me­dia af­ter a meet­ing with the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion at the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU) com­pound on East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille yes­ter­day. The strike be­gan on Feb­ru­ary 27 and is ex­pect­ed to pass the 90-day mark.

"We re­main on strike and ef­fec­tive strike, and de­spite what the man­age­ment say, we con­tin­ue to get re­ports of the short­age of ce­ment which is cre­at­ed by the strike ac­tion," Ro­get said. He said the union re­mained "al­ways on stand­by" for word from Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod to bring a res­o­lu­tion to the mat­ter. "But we are plac­ing our hopes in that bas­ket and that is why we are hav­ing an ef­fec­tive pick­et line," Ro­get added. Re­spond­ing to those who have brand­ed the strike as af­fect­ing the coun­try neg­a­tive­ly, Ro­get in­sist­ed the union had a "wealth" of ex­pe­ri­ence re­lat­ing to var­i­ous in­dus­tri­al ac­tions.

"At the end of the day it is the strength of the re­solve of the work­ers, the sac­ri­fice that they would make, the com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing that their terms and con­di­tions are im­proved," Ro­get said. Say­ing he was sure of vic­to­ry, he said it would al­so sig­nal tri­umph for work­ers through­out the coun­try. Ro­get al­so hailed the strik­ing TCL em­ploy­ees, who he de­scribed as coura­geous for in­sist­ing on their rights. "The TCL work­er is stand­ing up and pro­vid­ing a voice for the voice­less work­er, the ex­ploit­ed work­er, the work­er who works in un­safe and un­healthy con­di­tions and they can­not raise a voice." It has been re­port­ed that mount­ing loss­es were caused by the strike, which has al­so af­fect­ed the con­struc­tion sec­tor through a short­age of ce­ment.