Unilever Caribbean Lim­it­ed (UCL) has sent out a no­tice con­firm­ing that it has em­barked on a re­trench­ment ex­er­cise as a re­sult of re­struc­tur­ing of its op­er­a­tions in T&T.

The com­pa­ny said the de­ci­sion was tak­en af­ter "ex­haus­tive analy­ses of the cur­rent op­er­a­tions to en­sur­ing the eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of the or­gan­i­sa­tion."

UCL said a se­ries of im­prove­ment ini­tia­tives in all ar­eas of op­er­a­tions in the past two years which did not yield the re­sults re­quired to keep the com­pa­ny vi­able. It added that in the last six months there had been con­sul­ta­tions with the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU), the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union for its work­ers.

"These ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions were con­duct­ed with the ob­jec­tive of reach­ing a mu­tu­al­ly agree­able out­come in the in­ter­est of all con­cerned," UCL said.

"The com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to pri­ori­tise the safe­ty of all per­son­nel and will ac­tive­ly pur­sue the well­be­ing of the peo­ple and the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny. UCL will abide by and op­er­ate in ac­cor­dance with all le­gal oblig­a­tions in all mat­ters re­lat­ing to this de­ci­sion."

UCL said it will sharp­en the fo­cus of its core busi­ness to en­sure the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of its op­er­a­tions in T&T and the re­gion.

"UCL recog­nis­es that this process has been dif­fi­cult for its em­ploy­ees, their fam­i­lies, and en­tire com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The com­pa­ny ex­tends its ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the out­stand­ing ser­vice and con­tri­bu­tion over the past years and reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing its em­ploy­ees dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time."

On Tues­day, Neil Mc Each­nie, OW­TU branch rep­re­sen­ta­tive at Unilever, told the Guardian Me­dia that he was un­sure how many work­ers would be sent home but had been in­formed that an email was sent alert­ing work­ers of a meet­ing to be held. Work­ers were told by line man­agers to be present at spe­cif­ic meet­ing rooms.