Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Work­ers of the Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) squared off with po­lice and se­cu­ri­ty guards af­ter be­ing locked out of the com­pa­ny's Clax­ton Bay plant yes­ter­day. The work­ers, led by pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cel Ro­get, were pre­vent­ed from en­ter­ing the com­pound when they turned up for ori­en­ta­tion and to re­sume work. TCL man­age­ment and the union are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court to­day at 10 am for the first hear­ing of the in­dus­tri­al dis­pute as both sides seek a res­o­lu­tion. Po­lice from the St Mar­garet's sta­tion were called yes­ter­day when Ro­get and the work­ers tried to en­ter the com­pound.

Po­lice Sergeant Dwight Halls in­ter­vened dur­ing the stand-off be­tween the em­ploy­ees and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers. He told Ro­get: "The com­pa­ny is say­ing some­body will in­form you when they want you back on the job. That is the in­struc­tions I have. "They said as of now they do not want you back on the com­pound." Ro­get, speak­ing with re­porters out­side the com­pa­ny's gates, ac­cused TCL man­age­ment of break­ing the law and con­tin­u­ing lock­out ac­tion.

He said the dis­pute hav­ing been re­ferred to the court end­ed all strike and lock­out ac­tion.

Work­ers were sched­uled to at­tend ori­en­ta­tion ses­sions in batch­es of 30 yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, the ses­sions were called off by man­age­ment. About ten trucks loaded with ce­ment were backed up on the com­pound as the gates re­mained closed. TCL, in a me­dia re­lease, said: "Man­age­ment is com­mit­ted to the or­der­ly process of a full re­sump­tion of op­er­a­tions at TCL and con­demns in the strongest pos­si­ble terms at­tempts by the OW­TU to im­pose mob rule on the com­pa­ny." The re­lease said the process of ori­en­ta­tion was dis­rupt­ed "by non-com­pli­ance (with) le­git­i­mate in­struc­tions by the work­ers and the con­tin­u­a­tion of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by the OW­TU led by its pres­i­dent gen­er­al."