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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Arcelor­Mit­tal not in­sol­vent yet–Bap­tiste-Primus

Govt seeks jobs for laid off workers

by

20160314

Gov­ern­ment is work­ing out a plan to as­sist re­trenched work­ers in T&T, in­clud­ing the 644 ter­mi­nat­ed Arcelor­Mit­tal em­ploy­ees, by match­ing pri­vate sec­tor va­can­cies with the skills of re­trenched work­ers, Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus an­nounced yes­ter­day.

The min­is­ter re­vealed this af­ter a meet­ing with Arcelor­Mit­tal of­fi­cials and a sub­se­quent meet­ing with Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon to dis­cuss how they could help all re­trenched work­ers.

The Arcelor­Mit­tal meet­ing in­volved the com­pa­ny's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Robert Bel­lisle, sec­re­tary Vi­jay­alak­sh­mi Jaigopal, le­gal ad­vis­er Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, and a Price Wa­ter­house rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

This fol­lowed a meet­ing Bap­tiste-Primus held last week­end with the Steel Work­ers Union af­ter the com­pa­ny last Fri­day in­formed work­ers it was clos­ing its lo­cal op­er­a­tion and ter­mi­nat­ing their em­ploy­ment im­me­di­ate­ly.

Bap­tiste-Primus said yes­ter­day's meet­ing con­firmed the com­pa­ny was not yet in­sol­vent and that process had not yet been trig­gered, though there was an in­ten­tion to do so. She said Arcelor­Mit­tal sig­nalled it would fol­low the process un­der the law and by April 5 a liq­uida­tor was ex­pect­ed to be ap­point­ed.

"Once that (liq­uida­tor) takes over, Arcelor­Mit­tal as a com­pa­ny comes to an end but as I speak it is still a live en­ti­ty and that has re­spon­si­bil­i­ties un­der the law," she added, not­ing that the pay­ment of work­ers' salaries would be up to last Fri­day when work­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed.

The com­pa­ny al­so clar­i­fied union con­cerns on ben­e­fit plans and gave an un­der­tak­ing to meet sev­er­al plans.

But on the is­sue of work­ers over age 50 ac­cess­ing the pen­sion plan, she said Arcelor­Mit­tal of­fi­cials ex­pressed con­cern that would have im­pli­ca­tions, in­volv­ing use of more mon­ey, for the com­pa­ny.

Bap­tiste-Primus, who said pen­sion was a statu­to­ry oblig­a­tion that must be met, added: "I sought to re­mind (Arcelor­Mit­tal) that no em­ploy­er would em­ploy some­one over age 50, so those em­ploy­ees be­tween 50 and 59 re­al­ly need to have al­most im­me­di­ate ac­cess to the pen­sion for sur­viv­abil­i­ty, as they are out of jobs and there's no hope of an em­ploy­er em­ploy­ing them. In or­der to live they have to ac­cess the plan."

She said the com­pa­ny promised to con­sid­er that in dis­cus­sions with its provider and prin­ci­pal.

Arcelor­Mit­tal al­so has an Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Plan to pro­vide coun­selling for work­ers up to April 5 when the liq­uida­tor steps in. The com­pa­ny al­so gave an un­der­tak­ing to meet with the union on con­cerns, she said.

Arcelor­Mit­tal al­so con­firmed it would no longer be ap­peal­ing the re­cent In­dus­tri­al Court judg­ment against it, in which com­pen­sa­tion for laid-off work­ers was or­dered.

Bap­tiste-Primus re­it­er­at­ed that Gov­ern­ment had a ten-point plan to as­sist all re­trenched work­ers re­volv­ing around match­ing work­ers' skills with job va­can­cies.

Gov­ern­ment is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the man­u­fac­tur­ing, mar­itime and agri­cul­ture sec­tors, TTMA, En­er­gy Cham­ber, Am­cham and T&T Cham­ber on that, she said.

A job match­ing event for re­trenched work­ers, ti­tled "Turn­ing Ad­ver­si­ty in­to Op­por­tu­ni­ty", will be held on April 5, the day the Arcelor­Mit­tal liq­uida­tor starts op­er­at­ing.

It will in­volv­ing all busi­ness sec­tor stake­hold­ers plus the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency to pro­vide cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for re­trenched work­ers who have skills but lack cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The plan al­so in­volves con­vert­ing work­ers in­to tech­ni­cal/vo­ca­tion in­struc­tors via the Na­tion­al Skills Cen­tre and var­i­ous min­istries from Ed­u­ca­tion to So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

Bap­tiste-Primus said the min­istry and union had been meet­ing Arcelor­Mit­tal since last year on var­i­ous is­sues but the prospect of it clos­ing was nev­er hint­ed or aired.

She said the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's man­i­festo in­clud­ed a re­view of labour laws, and ways of pre­vent­ing a re­peat of the Arcelor­Mit­tal sit­u­a­tion may have to be dealt with in that.

But she said one had to be bal­anced and care­ful of dra­con­ian mea­sures that might dis­cour­age for­eign or lo­cal in­vestors.

She said ac­qui­si­tion of Arcelor­Mit­tal was not her re­mit but that of the Fi­nance Min­istry with whom the com­pa­ny would be speak­ing with as well.

Re­trench­ment reg­is­ter

Gov­ern­ment is es­tab­lish­ing a Na­tion­al Re­trench­ment Reg­is­ter by the end of this week to track job loss­es, Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus added yes­ter­day.

She said that was be­ing done since Gov­ern­ment sus­pect­ed the num­ber of re­trenched work­ers was more than num­bers giv­en re­cent­ly be­cause the law did not re­quire com­pa­nies to re­port re­trenched em­ploy­ees if the num­ber if less than five.

Three weeks ago in Par­lia­ment, she said the num­ber of those re­trenched up to then was 846 but she ad­mit­ted it could be more.

She said she was al­so meet­ing the Bankers' As­so­ci­a­tion and T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance com­pa­ny to­day to seek con­ces­sions so that fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions would not fore­close to pe­nalise re­trenched work­ers.

"Bad times don't last, it picks up. For work­ers who ser­vice their loans, that must car­ry a val­ue to­wards re­struc­tur­ing loans. There are many ways for re­lief to be brought to those re­trenched," she added.


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