Kevon Felmine

Af­ter weeks of in­tense protests for out­stand­ing wages, 860 em­ploy­ees of fi­nan­cial­ly em­bat­tled Con­stru­to­ra OAS re­ceived the dread­ful news yes­ter­day that the com­pa­ny had laid them off.

The work­ers, skilled and un­skilled labour­ers, truck dri­vers, op­er­a­tors, car­pen­ters and ma­sons, who had worked on the Solomon Ho­choy High­way project for the past few years, wait­ed anx­ious­ly as a time­keep­er read the names of those who would be ter­mi­nat­ed by the Brazil­ian firm on April 25. The re­trench­ment fol­lowed last Fri­day's dis­missal of 644 Arcelor­Mit­tal em­ploy­ees as that com­pa­ny shut down busi­ness with a $1.3 bil­lion debt hang­ing over it and in the midst of a weak glob­al steel mar­ket. Cen­tral Trinidad Steel Ltd (Cen­trin) and Tube City IMS each laid off 200 work­ers in Feb­ru­ary and De­cem­ber, re­spec­tive­ly, while In­dus­tri­al Plant Ser­vices Ltd (IP­SL) sent 75-plus work­ers home.

On March 7, Con­stru­to­ra OAS pro­posed to re­trench part of its work­force dur­ing a meet­ing with the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU). In a let­ter ad­dressed to OW­TU labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Max­ine Lake, last Fri­day, the com­pa­ny's coun­try su­per­in­ten­dent Ro­dri­go Ven­tu­ra said the cri­te­ria used for se­lect­ing work­ers for job cuts "was based on the to­tal for whom they are un­able to pro­vide work," as they must now "re­struc­ture their busi­ness."

Con­stru­to­ra OAS par­ent com­pa­ny, Gru­pos OAS in Brazil, filed for bank­rupt­cy last year af­ter its ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing was se­vere­ly re­strict­ed by a cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tion at Brazil­ian state-owned oil com­pa­ny, Petro­bras. In Ven­tu­ra's let­ter, he stat­ed that due to cir­cum­stances be­yond its con­trol, the com­pa­ny now had a sur­plus of bi-month­ly work­ers, to­talling 860.

A promise was made to pay out­stand­ing salaries next Mon­day for the pe­ri­ods end­ing Feb­ru­ary 29 and March 15. Al­though work­ers are not re­quired to work be­tween now and April 25, they are ex­pect­ed to be paid three bi-month­ly salaries on April 7, 22 and May 2. Sev­er­ance ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing out­stand­ing fringe ben­e­fits and un­used va­ca­tion leave, are to be paid on or be­fore May 25.

OW­TU rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jameel Thomas said anx­i­ety has now set in as work­ers are wor­ried about how they will feed them­selves and pay their bills when the mon­ey runs out.

"You don't know when the next bag of gro­ceries is com­ing in, you don't know when your next bill is go­ing to be paid. Every­body here is un­em­ployed and now the job hunt be­gins. Be­cause of the fact that we have 860 work­ers here and see­ing on the news that 650 work­ers were re­trenched from Arcelor­Mit­tal, you can see what is go­ing to take place with skilled labour.

"The mar­ket is go­ing to be sat­u­rat­ed with a lot of skilled labour­ers, op­er­a­tors and dri­vers...We are now go­ing to be in a po­si­tion where you might see your own friend or com­rade in an in­ter­view room wait­ing to be in­ter­viewed for the same po­si­tion as you. It is go­ing to be hard," Thomas said.

He said while some of the work­ers en­gaged in farm­ing and taxi ser­vices that could help to bring in in­come, those ad­min­is­tra­tive work­ers who were cut were the ones who would feel the brunt of un­em­ploy­ment.

Nid­co to com­plete work on site

Ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny's (Nid­co) act­ing pres­i­dent Steve Garib­s­ingh, Con­stru­to­ra OAS plans to em­ploy sev­er­al lo­cal con­trac­tors to com­plete out­stand­ing work so that it can leave the site by the end of May 2016.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from the Trinidad Guardian, Garib­s­ingh said, "In De­cem­ber 2015, Con­stru­to­ra OAS de­mo­bi­lized from the site for the Christ­mas va­ca­tion with the in­ten­tion to re­mo­bi­lize on Jan­u­ary 5, 2016. To date, works are yet to re­sume and OAS has re­port­ed that it has sev­er­al is­sues re­gard­ing pay­ments to sup­pli­ers, sub-con­trac­tors and work­ers that re­strict their abil­i­ty to restart works.

To meet its con­trac­tu­al com­mit­ments, OAS Con­stru­to­ra plans to en­gage sev­er­al lo­cal con­trac­tors to un­der­take out­stand­ing works on the high­way, so that it can leave the site by the end of May 2016. Dis­cus­sions be­tween OAS and lo­cal con­trac­tors are on­go­ing. This week, OAS gave an un­der­tak­ing to the OW­TU to pay sev­er­ance ben­e­fits to 860 bi-month­ly work­ers di­rect­ly em­ployed by OAS on or be­fore May 25, 2016.

"NID­CO wish­es to state that it is com­mit­ted through the man­date giv­en by the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go to com­plete the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin", the com­pa­ny said.?