Geisha Kow­lessar

Kendelle Cre­pin, a sub-ed­i­tor for the past nine years who was among 33 work­ers axed by One Caribbean Me­dia (OCM), says he might be forced to sell his car to sur­vive fi­nan­cial­ly.

Cre­pin, 34, of Ch­agua­nas, said while he has no chil­dren to look af­ter he has loans and ex­pressed con­cern that he would not be able to ho­n­our the pay­ments.

And faced with a bleak Christ­mas he said plans for the hol­i­day sea­son have been put on the back­burn­er.

Cre­pin, like the oth­er work­ers in­clud­ing those from the tele­vi­sion sta­tion, TV6, re­ceived let­ters on Fri­day in­form­ing them to at­tend meet­ings yes­ter­day with the hu­man re­sources de­part­ment.

The work­ers gath­ered at the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day as they held dis­cus­sions with Mario Als, deputy pres­i­dent of the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU).

Cre­pin said the let­ter is­sued by the com­pa­ny was mere­ly a for­mal­i­ty, as some staff mem­bers had seen the lay­offs com­ing.

"They just told us there were re­dun­dan­cies through­out the com­pa­ny and it was un­for­tu­nate that they had to let some peo­ple go.

"They said it was a nec­es­sary step. I don't think there were as many re­dun­dan­cies as the com­pa­ny said and a lot of peo­ple were shocked by the quick no­tice," Cre­pin said.

He said he ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a sev­er­ance pack­age which would rep­re­sent a per­cent­age of his salary but this mon­ey could on­ly last a cou­ple of months.

Say­ing that he was a "bit shocked," Cre­pin said he had al­ready put things in place to get an­oth­er job.

One pho­tog­ra­ph­er, based in the south bu­reau, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said he had worked for the com­pa­ny for the past five years and was al­so shocked he was fired.

With a young child to take care of he said he had faith in God that things would work out.

Trinidad Ex­press branch pres­i­dent for BIG­WU, Jamie Phillip, said the com­pa­ny's de­ci­sion came as a shock, as the union had be­lieved ne­go­ti­a­tions were still on­go­ing with the com­pa­ny over the po­si­tions which were se­lect­ed to be made re­dun­dant and the quan­ti­ty of staff ear­marked for dis­missal.

Als who en­cour­aged work­ers not to be dis­cour­aged said the union was not for­mal­ly no­ti­fied by the com­pa­ny.

He said the union in­tends to ne­go­ti­ate with the com­pa­ny with the hope of get­ting some of the let­ters re­scind­ed. He claimed there were sev­er­al breach­es of the law in­clud­ing not en­gag­ing in an ap­pro­pri­ate con­sul­ta­tion with the union.

The 33 em­ploy­ees in­clude 25 work­ers from the Ex­press and eight em­ploy­ees from TV6.

Some em­ploy­ees at the Trinidad Ex­press' news­room said the move has left work­ers de­mor­alised.

Some 49 work­ers from the com­pa­ny's pro­duc­tion de­part­ment were sent home in De­cem­ber last year but 17 were re­called as pro­duc­tion dead­lines were hit by staff short­ages.

While the work­ers were aware of the pend­ing re­trench­ment, many were not in­formed of the ef­fect on their po­si­tions un­til they re­ceived their let­ters on Fri­day.

The work­ers sus­pect there will be an­oth­er wave of re­trench­ment next year. The re­trench­ment fol­lows a down­turn in the econ­o­my lead­ing to low­er prof­it mar­gins for the OCM group and the in­vest­ment in au­to­mat­ed tech­nol­o­gy.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cial from the com­pa­ny's hu­man re­sources de­part­ment, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said the mat­ter was of a sen­si­tive na­ture and no in­for­ma­tion could be di­vulged at this time.