Sev­en store su­per­vi­sors of Unit­ed In­de­pen­dent Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (Unipet) yes­ter­day broke down in tears af­ter they were sur­pris­ing­ly hand­ed re­trench­ment let­ters, as the com­pa­ny em­barked on a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, claim­ing that their jobs have be­come re­dun­dant.

And work­ers fear that next in line to be sent home are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 cashiers.

How­ev­er, the po­si­tions of store su­per­vi­sor are ex­pect­ed to be im­me­di­ate­ly filled by new em­ploy­ees un­der the job ti­tle As­sis­tant Store Man­agers. The ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers, some of whom have sev­en years’ ser­vice, in­tend to raise this with their lawyers and union in the com­ing days.

The sacked work­ers, some of whom worked at Unipet’s Brent­wood, Curepe and St Au­gus­tine branch­es each earned a month­ly salary of $5,250.

One of the re­trench­ment let­ters ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, signed by Unipet’s act­ing CEO Kirt Hill, stat­ed that fur­ther to con­sul­ta­tions held by Unipet’s man­age­ment dur­ing stand down meet­ings the com­pa­ny em­barked on a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise in 2017 based on strate­gic plans and ob­jec­tives.

The let­ter stat­ed that based on the re­struc­tur­ing, the po­si­tion of store su­per­vi­sor be­came “re­dun­dant” and was pro­vid­ed with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be in­ter­viewed for As­sis­tant Store Man­ag­er.

“It is with deep re­gret that we in­form you that you are un­suc­cess­ful at the in­ter­view for the role of As­sis­tant Store Man­ag­er. Based on the fore­go­ing, your po­si­tion has been deemed sur­plus labour and we are there­fore left with no al­ter­na­tive but to sev­er the em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ship ef­fec­tive No­vem­ber 17.”

The work­ers will be paid sev­er­ance ben­e­fits in the com­ing days.

The let­ter ad­vised that over the next 45 days they are free to make arrange­ment to seek em­ploy­ment, but “you should re­main avail­able to us as far as pos­si­ble dur­ing this pe­ri­od in the event that we re­quire your ser­vice.”

One of the re­trenched work­ers, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, ad­mit­ted that the news of be­ing laid off hit her like a tonne of bricks, as she no­ti­fied not to at­tend work but to re­port to Unipet’s head of­fice in San Juan.

“They were talk­ing about send­ing home work­ers be­fore but we did not know when it was go­ing to take place. Those who were sent home are all sin­gle moth­ers. We trained our re­place­ment that is the sad thing about it. As of to­day, I am job­less,” she said.

“What we heard, is that the cashiers are next…about 20 of them will be go­ing home. They too will be re­placed by new work­ers un­der a dif­fer­ent job ti­tle.”

She said the salaries of­fered to the As­sis­tant Store Man­ag­er was far more than what the store su­per­vi­sors were paid.

The work­ers have threat­ened to raise their ter­mi­na­tion with their union whom they re­fused to name.

Chair­man of Unipet Dr Afraz Ali ad­vised that we call Unipet’s CEO Dex­ter Ri­ley for a re­sponse on the mat­ter.

Ali said he was un­aware that the em­ploy­ment of some of its store su­per­vi­sors had been dis­con­tin­ued.

“That is a man­age­ment thing. I chair the board. That would come to us in a board re­port, I would imag­ine at the end of this month, since it has now tak­en place, from what you said. The board would be no­ti­fied of the cir­cum­stances of the need to let them go,” Ali said.

How­ev­er, calls to Ri­ley’s cell­phone went unan­swered, as he is out of the coun­try.