The In­dus­tri­al Court is sched­uled to de­liv­er its de­ci­sion on the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union’s ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion stop­ping Petrotrin from start­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of work­ers on Mon­day af­ter­noon.

A five-mem­ber pan­el of judges, led by the court’s pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix, yes­ter­day re­served their de­ci­sion on the is­sue af­ter pre­sid­ing over a marathon hear­ing at the court’s Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters, which end­ed around 7 pm.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, the union is seek­ing an in­junc­tion bar­ring Petrotrin from be­gin­ning the process of ter­mi­nat­ing work­ers un­til its sub­stan­tive com­plaint against the com­pa­ny for al­leged­ly com­mit­ting an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence is de­ter­mined.

OW­TU is al­leg­ing that Petrotrin com­mit­ted the of­fence by fail­ing to con­sult with it be­fore tak­ing the de­ci­sion to close the com­pa­ny and send home al­most 5,000 work­ers.

“You have to con­sult at a for­ma­tive stage, not when you have al­ready made the de­ci­sion. You are ba­si­cal­ly ma­m­aguy­ing peo­ple,” Dou­glas Mendes SC said as he claimed the com­pa­ny on­ly con­sult­ed with his client af­ter it had made the de­ci­sion, in con­junc­tion with Cab­i­net, in Au­gust.

Mendes al­leged that the com­pa­ny was bound by a Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MOA) signed in April, in which the par­ties agreed to work to­geth­er to make the com­pa­ny com­pet­i­tive and prof­itable. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that even with con­sul­ta­tion the com­pa­ny could have still end­ed up in the cur­rent po­si­tion.

“The union does not say that the com­pa­ny could not change its mind or does not have the pow­er to shut down if it wants,” Mendes said, as he sug­gest­ed con­sul­ta­tion would have giv­en the thou­sands of work­ers fac­ing un­em­ploy­ment dig­ni­ty.

In re­sponse, Regi­nald Ar­mour SC, who is lead­ing the com­pa­ny’s le­gal team, de­scribed the move by the union as a le­gal sub­terfuge de­signed to de­lay the in­evitable. Ar­mour said the com­pa­ny signed the MOA af­ter pos­i­tive talks with the union, but had to change its mind on the way for­ward af­ter its en­er­gy con­sul­tants sug­gest­ed that shut­ting down the com­pa­ny would be the on­ly vi­able way to meet its bil­lion-dol­lar debt oblig­a­tions.

Ar­mour said the com­pa­ny was re­quired to con­sult with the Gov­ern­ment first as it is its sole share­hold­er. He claimed that while the com­pa­ny was firm in its po­si­tion that clo­sure was the best op­tion, it was still will­ing to lis­ten to vi­able al­ter­na­tives when the union was con­sult­ed in late Au­gust. He not­ed that the union was yet to pro­duce a suit­able al­ter­na­tive. Ar­mour al­so said the com­pa­ny was not legal­ly bound to con­sult be­fore de­cid­ing to close its op­er­a­tions.

Ques­tioned by In­dus­tri­al Court Judge Al­bert Ab­erdeen on the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed plan to restart Petrotrin’s prof­itable ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion op­er­a­tions af­ter the com­pa­ny’s clo­sure, Ar­mour said a fi­nal de­ci­sion on the plan is yet to be de­ter­mined. Ar­mour al­so could not ex­plain why Gov­ern­ment had se­lect­ed the end of next month for the clo­sure.

In its sub­mis­sions, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al pre­sent­ed state­ments from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance over the im­pact the in­junc­tion may have on the econ­o­my.

Seenath Jairam SC al­leged that the in­junc­tion would lead to a down­grad­ing of the coun­try’s cred­it rat­ing by in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies such as Moody’s and Stan­dard and Poor’s.

“These agen­cies would con­tin­ue to treat us like a ba­nana re­pub­lic and down­grade us,” Jairam said.

Jairam, whose client was on­ly grant­ed per­mis­sion to in­ter­vene in the case yes­ter­day morn­ing, spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time de­scrib­ing Petrotrin’s fi­nan­cial im­pact on T&T.

“It is bleed­ing the econ­o­my and de­priv­ing cit­i­zens of this coun­try,” Jairam said.

Jairam claimed the de­ci­sion to close next month was tak­en as the com­pa­ny would need time to re­fi­nance its debt, which in­cludes a US$850 mil­lion bond, which is due in Au­gust next year.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, Thomas-Fe­lix asked the par­ties if they wished to for­go the in­junc­tion and ex­pe­dite the union’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence com­plaint. Thomas-Fe­lix sug­gest­ed it could be com­plet­ed be­fore Gov­ern­ment’s No­vem­ber 30 dead­line for clos­ing the com­pa­ny.

While Jairam and Ar­mour agreed, Mendes claimed his clients would feel more com­fort­able if they had a court-or­dered in­junc­tion in place.

The union is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by An­tho­ny Bul­lock, while Derek Ali, Vanes­sa Gopaul and Mar­celle Fer­di­nand are ap­pear­ing along­side Ar­mour for Petrotrin. At­tor­ney Rishi Dass and Dar­ryl Al­la­har are al­so on the State’s le­gal team.