Yvonne Webb

The Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) is claim­ing po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion af­ter its Trin­mar branch pres­i­dent, Ernesto Ke­sar, was fired for be­ing ab­sent from work for just over four hours with­out per­mis­sion on Oc­to­ber 17.Ke­sar, who was a su­per­vi­sor in the Pro­cure­ment and Ma­te­ri­als De­part­ment at Petrotrin's Ma­rine fa­cil­i­ty at Trin­mar, Point Fortin, was served with a dis­missal no­tice on Wednes­day.

The let­ter, signed by Petrotrin's vice-pres­i­dent, hu­man re­sources and cor­po­rate ser­vices Kei­th Ram­nath, goes in­to ef­fect on No­vem­ber 17. Ke­sar, who has over 20 years ser­vice with the com­pa­ny, was al­ready on an un­paid five-day sus­pen­sion since No­vem­ber 10 for hold­ing union meet­ings on the com­pa­ny's premis­es.He al­so was served a warn­ing no­tice pri­or to the sus­pen­sion for breach­ing the com­pa­ny's rules to hold union meet­ings on the premis­es.

Ke­sar con­test­ed the La Brea seat in 2010 on a Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) tick­et but lost to the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) Fitzger­ald Jef­frey. He with­drew his sup­port for the par­ty along with the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) when they pulled out as a coali­tion part­ner. OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get ad­dressed con­cerned Trin­mar work­ers at the union's New Lands, Point Fortin, of­fices yes­ter­day. The work­ers had de­mand­ed to know why their pres­i­dent was fired and who would be next.

Ro­get told the work­ers to unite and be pre­pared to make sac­ri­fices be­cause they were go­ing all out to chal­lenge the in­jus­tice."This was done to spite Ke­sar," an irate Ro­get told work­ers, while as­sur­ing them the union will chal­lenge the dis­missal and the work­er will be re­stored to his po­si­tion.He added: "It can­not be busi­ness as usu­al at Trin­mar. You can­not fire the pres­i­dent of the Trin­mar branch and ex­pect the work­ers to come out and work. They are threat­en­ing our job se­cu­ri­ty, they are threat­en­ing our fam­i­lies. "We must be pre­pared to make cer­tain sac­ri­fices. We must be pre­pared to use what­ev­er means nec­es­sary which is with­in our rights. We must be pre­pared to go to Port-of-Spain and march."At­tempts to con­tact Ke­sar were un­suc­cess­ful as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered.

As­sault on OW­TU

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian af­ter­wards, Ro­get said Ke­sar had re­quest­ed the time to de­liv­er some let­ters in Port-of-Spain.Ro­get ex­plained: "The rea­son they fired him, and they could not state this, is be­cause he em­bar­rassed them when he point­ed out (in a let­ter to the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy) that the man­age­ment failed to deal with the is­sues of ma­rine trans­porta­tion and en­sur­ing prop­er boats are in place to take work­ers off­shore safe­ly and that the con­trac­tor con­tin­ues to hold the com­pa­ny at ran­som.

"They could not fire him in the ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ty un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act as a union of­fi­cer, so they say he was ab­sent with­out per­mis­sion. "They feel they could in­tim­i­date the rest of the work­ers. They feel they can si­lence any dis­sent­ing voice of any­body who stands up to speak out against them as they con­tin­ue with their cor­rup­tion and so on."

Say­ing that Ke­sar was fired with the full knowl­edge of the Cab­i­net and the Petrotrin board, Ro­get warned that there would be a high po­lit­i­cal price to pay come elec­tion 2015. Union mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to gath­er out­side the Pointe-a-Pierre ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing at Petrotrin to­day, to protest Ke­sar's fir­ing and de­mand his re­in­state­ment.