RADHICA DE SILVA
radhica.sookraj@guardian.co.tt
As ammonia prices continue to soar globally, president general of Oilfields Workers' Trade president general Ancel Roget has vowed to do his best to let workers benefit from the profits.
Early Thursday morning, Roget and his team went to Yara Trinidad Limited in Couva to submit a proposal for fresh wage negotiations.
Singing the union's battle tunes, Roget and the workers marched through the rain to the company's headquarters to personally deliver the wage negotiation proposal to the Yara management team.
He was greeted by two managers who promised to take the proposal to the right people.
The company has over 220 permanent workers out of which 166 are unionised under the OWTU.
Roget said all was not well with the negotiating process between Yara Trinidad Limited and the OWTU.
"We are about to deliver a new proposal for the new period of collective bargaining that is 2022 to 2025. Right now the company has a proposal for 2019 to 2021 which they are not prepared to settle and have not responded to properly," he revealed.
Despite this, he said the OWTU is not prepared to go to court.
"We are in a time of very high ammonia prices. We are prepared to do all that is necessary and we will do whatever is within the law and industrial relations to settle these negotiations," he said as he handed over the proposals to the YARA team.
He added: "We are not prepared to go to court. They have not responded to the last proposal but we are going to ensure that these proposals are treated with respect."
Roget had a private meeting with workers before he handed over the proposals.
In March 2017, after several length conciliation sessions with the Ministry of Labour, the OWTU settled for a seven per cent wage increase for the period 2016 to 2018. It submitted proposals for 2019 to 2021 but these were never addressed.
According to the Ministry of Energy website, there are 11 ammonia plants in Point Lisas of which Yara Trinidad Limited produces 285,000 metric tonnes of ammonia annually.
In November 2019, Yara closed one of its wholly-owned ammonia plants in Point Lisas. The company cited low ammonia prices as a reason at that time. It said the Yara Trinidad plant was one of three ammonia plants operated by Yara Trinidad Ltd. The remaining two plants, Tringen I and Tringen II, are jointly owned by Yara International ASA and National Enterprises Ltd (NEL).