Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Strik­ing work­ers from In­land and Off­shore Con­trac­tors Ltd say they are brac­ing for vic­tim­i­sa­tion when they re­turn to work lat­er this week as their 90-day strike comes to an end on Thurs­day.

Some of the work­ers, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, say they are cer­tain that when they go back to work, the com­pa­ny's man­age­ment would find ways to make them suf­fer.

"Some of us were anx­ious to go back out to work but then the com­pa­ny stat­ed that we should re­turn on Fri­day rather than Wednes­day and this made some of us wor­ried about vic­tim­i­sa­tion," one of the strik­ers said.

He added that a few work­ers had bro­ken the pick­et line and re­turned to work but the ma­jor­i­ty of em­ploy­ees had stayed truth­ful to the cause.

"I think we got the re­spect from the com­pa­ny but right now all of us are very de­mo­ti­vat­ed and when we go back out to work we will not have the zeal that we had be­fore," an­oth­er work­er said.

Asked what im­pact the strike had on fam­i­ly life, the work­ers said many of their col­leagues from Ica­cos and Ce­dros did not have mon­ey to trav­el to come to the strike camp every day.

"Some peo­ple had prob­lems pay­ing their bills and they had to hus­tle with odd jobs," he added.

Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union shop stew­ard Ronald Williams was en­gaged in a meet­ing yes­ter­day and was ex­pect­ed to meet with the strik­ing work­ers yes­ter­day to let them know the date they would have to re­turn to work.

Mean­while, IO­CL's Hu­man Re­source and In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions con­sul­tant Suren Dook­ie said not all work­ers would be re­quired to come out to du­ty on Fri­day.

"This is not about vic­tim­i­sa­tion. We have to ros­ter our crews. We are in dis­cus­sions with Petrotrin to en­sure that things are ready and then we will ros­ter our crews. We are al­so in touch with the union to en­sure that there are no im­ped­i­ments with re­spect to em­ploy­ees re­sum­ing du­ties," Dook­ie added.

Say­ing that IO­CL does not en­gage in vic­tim­i­sa­tion, Dook­ie added, "I can­not al­lay their fears, in ac­cor­dance with the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, ei­ther par­ty can make a re­quest to the Min­is­ter of Labour to re­fer the mat­ter to the court. If the union and em­ploy­er doesn't make a re­quest the Min­is­ter does­nt have the au­thor­i­ty to re­fer it to court."

He added that any work­er who feels vic­timised can bring their con­cerns to the OW­TU.

The union is seek­ing a wage in­crease of 80 per cent for the pe­ri­od 2013-2015 to put the work­ers on par with Petrotrin's min­i­mum wage. IO­CL of­fi­cials main­tain that the re­quire­ment to pay the Petrotrin min­i­mum wage is null and void be­cause a col­lec­tive agree­ment al­ready ex­ists with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive union.

IO­CL pro­vides ma­rine and land trans­porta­tion ser­vices for Petrotrin's Trin­mar op­er­a­tions. The strike ac­tion be­gan on Oc­to­ber 20, last year.