Resh­ma Ra­goonath

State-run oil com­pa­ny, Petrotrin, has been or­dered to pay com­pen­sa­tion to for­mer se­nior Trin­mar em­ploy­ees, Mar­lon Butch­er and Dou­glas John­son, af­ter they chal­lenged their 2006 dis­missals. Yes­ter­day, In­dus­tri­al Court vice-pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Bak­er ruled the dis­missals breached the prin­ci­ples of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions. The judge, in his 13-page writ­ten rul­ing on the trade dis­pute, said: "The ter­mi­na­tion of these work­ers was ef­fect­ed in cir­cum­stances that were harsh and op­pres­sive and not in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice."

Butch­er, of Co­coyea, and John­son, of Gas­par­il­lo, sought the court's in­ter­ven­tion af­ter they were dis­missed fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions they breached pro­ce­dure in buy­ing ma­te­ri­als and breached the com­pa­ny pol­i­cy on ac­cept­ing gifts. It was stat­ed they had re­ceived a gift of air­line tick­ets to Texas to at­tend a con­fer­ence. Yes­ter­day the men, flanked by rel­a­tives and Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union of­fi­cials, said they were sat­is­fied with the court's rul­ing. Butch­er said: "I feel vin­di­cat­ed and I feel now the com­pa­ny should look in­ward­ly and look at the process­es to de­ter­mine what they are do­ing in­cor­rect­ly.

"They should con­sid­er work­ers and their fam­i­lies and put peo­ple first, rather than their own agen­das on the ta­ble." John­son said he had dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing em­ploy­ment fol­low­ing his dis­missal from Petrotrin. "It's un­for­tu­nate but what I have been through for the past four years has ba­si­cal­ly de­stroyed my life, my ca­reer, my rep­u­ta­tion. I feel vin­di­cat­ed from the court's de­ci­sion," the fa­ther of two said. He added: "It's easy to de­stroy peo­ple's lives out of pure care­less­ness, reck­less­ness and a sim­ple mis­take made by peo­ple in the com­pa­ny who think they know every­thing."

The work­ers were rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Derek Ali, while Petrotrin was rep­re­sent­ed by Ernest Koy­lass, SC, and Flo­rence Mulchans­ingh.

In 2006 the men held se­nior po­si­tions at Trin­mar's pur­chas­ing de­part­ment. On Oc­to­ber 4, 2006, they were in­formed of al­leged wrong-do­ing un­der the pro­cure­ment ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and breach of con­duct/con­flict of in­ter­est poli­cies and sus­pend­ed with pay, pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The sus­pen­sion was ex­tend­ed and they lat­er were in­formed by let­ter their ser­vices would be ter­mi­nat­ed.

Bak­er said the dis­missal was writ­ten in "broad gen­er­al terms" as were the charges against the men.

Bak­er said: "The al­le­ga­tions made against these work­ers were in­deed se­ri­ous and mer­it­ed full and thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion. "No em­ploy­er can be ex­pect­ed to do less. It is un­for­tu­nate that what may have been an ex­cess of zeal led to fair­ness be­ing com­pro­mised." He added: "A par­lour-keep­er and a ma­jor con­glom­er­ate must both be fair, but their re­sources may cause dif­fer­ent man­i­fes­ta­tions of fair­ness."

More in­fo

OW­TU Petrotrin Trin­mar branch pres­i­dent Ernesto Ke­sar says "heads must roll" af­ter the state-run oil gi­ant was deemed to have act­ed "harsh and op­pres­sive" in the dis­missal of two se­nior em­ploy­ees. Ke­sar, who was in court yes­ter­day, said: "We are call­ing for jus­tice on both sides now. Jus­tice has been served in the courts and we are now call­ing on Petrotrin to deal with these rogue man­agers and let jus­tice be served." He said the rul­ing "is a land­mark vic­to­ry for the OW­TU."

He added: "These two com­rades are two very se­nior com­rades in Petrotrin/Trin­mar and what has hap­pened (yes­ter­day) has proven that the union was right all along." The dis­missal of Butch­er and John­son, he said, "was based on as­sump­tions, lies, half-truths and in­nu­en­does." Ke­sar said OW­TU was call­ing on "Petrotrin to dis­ci­pline those man­agers be­cause they have cost (the com­pa­ny) lots of mon­ey. "They have cost Petrotrin le­gal fees and they have cost the en­tire op­er­a­tions to run in­ef­fi­cient­ly be­cause of short staff," he added.