Shal­iza?Has­sanali

For­mer chair­man of Petrotrin Lind­say Gillette yes­ter­day slammed the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) for hold­ing the coun­try to ran­som with its strike no­tice, which is ex­pect­ed to be served on Petrotrin to­mor­row.

Yes­ter­day, Gillette said the threat by OW­TU's pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get to shut down the state-owned com­pa­ny was in­con­sid­er­ate and ir­re­spon­si­ble, as he urged Gov­ern­ment to call out the army to run Petrotrin's re­fin­ery if work­ers boy­cott work.

"Do you think the whole of Trinidad and To­ba­go is in sup­port of that strike? You are go­ing to strike when the coun­try is go­ing through an eco­nom­ic down­turn and the price of oil and gas have fall­en to such dras­tic lev­els? Do you think it is right to be hav­ing those kinds of is­sues on the ta­ble when the coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing great de­cline? Come on! Are they go­ing to reach a point of drain­ing the coun­try of every­thing it has? Where is your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to T&T?"

These were the ques­tions, Gillette said, Ro­get need­ed to an­swer.

"It means that if you are not get­ting your way you would hold a gun to some­body's head. I don't think that is nec­es­sar­i­ly the way you re­solve is­sues and prob­lems..... be­cause while you may be fight­ing for your work­ers, what about the 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple? Peo­ple must ex­er­cise ex­treme re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when these things be­gin to oc­cur."

Yes­ter­day, in the press re­lease, the OW­TU said that the pe­ri­od of con­cil­i­a­tion re­gard­ing Petrotrin work­ers' wage in­crease for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2017 of­fi­cial­ly ex­pires to­day and as such the union will host an emer­gency press con­fer­ence at 10 am at the Union's Head­quar­ters, in San Fer­nan­do, where Ro­get will make a state­ment re­gard­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of con­cil­ia­to­ry talks and new in­for­ma­tion reach­ing the union per­tain­ing to the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The re­lease al­so said that there was one last meet­ing sched­uled be­tween the OW­TU and the Min­istry of Labour at 1 pm to­day at the Min­istry of Labour of­fice in San Fer­nan­do.

Pri­or to this meet­ing, Ro­get is al­so ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the me­dia at 12.45 pm.

Gillette said T&T should nev­er be in a sit­u­a­tion where the coun­try has to im­port fu­el if the shut­down lingers for a pro­longed pe­ri­ods.

"We should not be go­ing down that road. The re­al­i­ty is that we have gas and oil as a coun­try. We should nev­er be held to ran­som. Nev­er! No one per­son, no one or­gan­i­sa­tion or no one com­pa­ny should hold a coun­try to ran­son. The an­swer to that is ab­solute­ly not. Lit­tle things like this can hold the coun­try for ran­son. We re­al­ly have an is­sue at stake. That is my point."

Gillette said if the strike ac­tion lingers, the army can be brought in to fill in for work­ers who would stay home.

In 2012, Gillette said Petrotrin ex­pe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion where work­ers downed tools af­ter for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine had an­nounced that Cab­i­net had de­cid­ed to grant a li­cence to a lo­cal op­er­a­tive, a sub­sidiary of Bunker­ing In­ter­na­tion­al, to run a ma­jor bunker­ing fa­cil­i­ty in T&T wa­ters. The army had to be called in 2012, he said.

"We did it when we were there. The army had a big role to play. We have to get the army ready to han­dle any sit­u­a­tion....this sit­u­a­tion. The army can car­ry this thing for a while. They were trained in the port and the re­fin­ery. It is a ful­ly trained func­tion­ing unit. You have many op­tions but the army is trained to do that. There is no two ways about it. The army can do the job."

He said Petrotrin's man­agers were al­so trained and ca­pa­ble of keep­ing the re­fin­ery op­er­a­tional, Gillette said.

"There are op­tions they can in­sti­tute."

Last Fri­day, Ro­get an­nounced that fol­low­ing a marathon ses­sion of con­cil­i­a­tion talks at the Min­istry of Labour the of­fer by Petrotrin in wage ne­go­ti­a­tions re­mained at ze­ro-ze­ro-ze­ro.

The OW­TU has de­mand­ed ten per cent for that pe­ri­od.

Ro­get warned that if Petrotrin failed to set­tle ne­go­ti­a­tions by Tues­day, there would be a com­plete shut down of the com­pa­ny.

In re­sponse, pres­i­dent of Petrotrin Fitzroy Hare­wood said the com­pa­ny was not pre­pared to in­crease it's ze­ro-ze­ro-ze­ro of­fer to work­ers.

"Giv­en what now seems an in­evitable strike ac­tion, the com­pa­ny has ini­ti­at­ed a num­ber of con­tin­gency mea­sures to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity of sup­plies to the lo­cal mar­ket for pe­tro­le­um-re­fined prod­ucts as long as rea­son­ably pos­si­ble. It al­so goes with­out say­ing that the com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial loss­es will be greater due to the loss of rev­enue ex­pect­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od of a strike," Hare­wood stat­ed in a let­ter.

If the work­ers go on strike, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,450 of the com­pa­ny's 5,000 em­ploy­ees will be stay­ing away from work for 90 days.

Pro­duc­tion of crude oil, which is used to make gaso­line, diesel, kerosene and jet fu­el, will be se­vere­ly af­fect­ed lead­ing to short­ages at the pumps.

Gillette said Petrotrin had to find ways to ham­mer out some kind of agree­ment with the OW­TU.

If the strike per­sists, Gillette said a lot would be at stake.

He said the worst-case sce­nario com­ing out of the strike was that no fu­el would be avail­able to the pub­lic, which could crip­ple the en­tire coun­try, main­ly busi­ness­es.

Asked if im­port­ing fu­el was an op­tion, Gillette said yes, but not­ed that the coun­try should nev­er re­sort to this mea­sure.

"We should nev­er go down this road."

Ro­get and OW­TU's chief ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer Ozzi War­wick did not re­spond to calls yes­ter­day, while pres­i­dent of the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T Dax Dri­ver re­served com­ment.

Dri­ver said the strike is­sue was a "com­plex mat­ter" and the cham­ber would is­sue a press re­lease to­day or to­mor­row.