Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

With no mon­ey to buy food or books for their chil­dren, OAS work­ers turned on the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union yes­ter­day, ac­cus­ing se­nior union of­fi­cials of us­ing poor peo­ple to ful­fil a po­lit­i­cal agen­da.

The ran­cour oc­curred around 3 pm at the union's Para­mount Head­quar­ters where chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Lyn­don Men­doza, in­formed the work­ers of the Gov­ern­ment's stance to with­hold OAS per­for­mance bonds.

The union had called for the bonds to be used to pay the work­ers' out­stand­ing wages, mer­it in­creas­es and sev­er­ance pay.

Men­doza said two meet­ings were held with Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus on June 24 and Ju­ly 1 but the OW­TU was told that the bonds could not be re­leased to pay the 1,200 OAS work­ers.

Call­ing for the work­ers to take mass protest ac­tion out­side the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) on Au­gust 18 when the union again meets with Bap­tiste-Primus, Men­doza said it was pub­lic knowl­edge that OAS had "aban­doned ship."

He added: "We got no res­o­lu­tion from the Labour Min­is­ter but an­oth­er meet­ing is card­ed for Au­gust 18.

"The min­is­ter has said that there is a bond that Nid­co is hold­ing but it can­not be used to pay out­stand­ing mat­ters.

"That is an opin­ion we do not agree with. We need mass ac­tion to change that opin­ion," Men­doza said.

He al­so added that the OW­TU was plan­ning ma­jor protest ac­tion to­mor­row in Port-of-Spain and he want­ed the OAS work­ers to join in.

"While this ac­tion on Thurs­day is im­por­tant, we do not want it to take away from our main ob­jec­tive on Au­gust 18, so each of you has to act as a mes­sen­ger to get peo­ple out to sup­port the strug­gle," Men­doza said.

How­ev­er, some of the work­ers be­came in­censed.

"What will be achieve by go­ing to Nid­co. Ent Nid­co has a boss. Why we don't protest out­side Row­ley of­fice? Not Nid­co," Akeil Matthews shout­ed.

Ask­ing what the union hoped to achieve, Matthews added: "We stand up with this union since OAS was here and we reach nowhere."

Stef­fon Cum­mings, who has been un­em­ployed since Jan­u­ary, said he was in dan­ger of los­ing his home be­cause he could no longer af­ford mort­gage.

Michael Joseph said he took his 14-year-old daugh­ter, Sheni­qua, out of pub­lic school and en­rolled her at ACE Acad­e­my pri­vate school to get qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion but he could no longer af­ford the fees since he lost his job.

"I look­ing for a job. I dropped in ten re­sumes yes­ter­day. I want work but it's noth­ing I could get.

"Where is the union? They just us­ing peo­ple," Joseph shout­ed, be­fore walk­ing out.

He lat­er said that he had lost faith in the union which was us­ing poor peo­ple to get po­lit­i­cal mileage.

Oth­er work­ers al­so asked why Ro­get was not present at yes­ter­day's meet­ing. Men­doza as­sured that Ro­get would be present at the meet­ing on Au­gust 18.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ro­get said he un­der­stood the work­ers' frus­tra­tion but as­sured the OW­TU was do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure out­stand­ing salaries, mer­it in­creas­es and sev­er­ance were paid.

"They have to un­der­stand that the union con­tin­ues to do all that is nec­es­sary with­in the con­fines of the law. That is why we have to change the ex­ist­ing law so we have em­barked on an ac­tive cam­paign to change the law and for this we need their sup­port," Ro­get said.

He added that peo­ple must un­der­stand all the is­sues and vis­i­bly put them­selves in place to fight for their rights.