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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Angostura adds staff in bad economy

by

Kyron Regis
2133 days ago
20190921
Leader of the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Trade Union (SWWTU) Michael Annisette, left, signs the MOU between Angostura Ltd and SWWTU on future expansion and diversification, as Angostura Executive Manager Corporate Service Rahim Mohammed, centre, and Angostura CEO, (Ag), right, look on. The signing took place at the Angostura Oak Room, House of Angostura, Eastern Main Road, Laventille.

Leader of the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Trade Union (SWWTU) Michael Annisette, left, signs the MOU between Angostura Ltd and SWWTU on future expansion and diversification, as Angostura Executive Manager Corporate Service Rahim Mohammed, centre, and Angostura CEO, (Ag), right, look on. The signing took place at the Angostura Oak Room, House of Angostura, Eastern Main Road, Laventille.

Abraham Diaz

In the midst of thou­sands of em­ploy­ees los­ing their jobs in T&T, An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd has added 54 per­ma­nent staff mem­bers to its or­gan­i­Sa­tion.

Speak­ing at an MOU sign­ing be­tween An­gos­tu­ra and the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU), CEO of An­gos­tu­ra, Ian Forbes said that im­prov­ing the com­pa­ny’s sup­ply chain re­mains part of An­gos­tu­ra’s five-year strate­gic plan and in or­der to ac­com­plish this, it need­ed more staff mem­bers.

He said: “The is­sue is the lack of ad­e­quate re­sources to fill the de­mand that we are cre­at­ing, have of­ten been in times past, a hin­drance to our ex­pan­sion.”

Forbes not­ed that in­creased ad­min­is­tra­tive costs can nev­er be equat­ed to the costs of lost op­por­tu­ni­ty.

He said: “We are not con­cerned so much with the ad­min­is­tra­tive costs as we are con­cerned with the op­por­tu­ni­ty cost of sup­ply­ing the de­mand for our prod­ucts.”

The SWW­TU Pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette praised the de­ci­sion tak­en by the com­pa­ny.

He said: “An­gos­tu­ra did not say ‘ay we go­ing through prob­lems’ al­right let us cut staff’. An­gos­tu­ra did not say like some oth­er com­pa­nies, ‘this is too cost­ly an ex­er­cise and it will be cheap­er to out­source work­ers’”.

The com­pa­ny in­creased its head­count by thir­ty-four in 2019 and in 2017-2018 the staff grew by twen­ty. The Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ag­er of cor­po­rate ser­vices at An­gos­tu­ra, Rahim Mo­hammed, not­ed: “The ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es go­ing up for the thir­ty-four is neg­li­gi­ble, and I would say ac­count for maybe one per cent or less of our ad­min ex­pens­es.”

He added that the val­ue the in­crease in staff brings is eighty to nine­ty times the cost of em­ploy­ing new staff. Mo­hammed said: “The re­turn on what we’re do­ing is very sig­nif­i­cant.”

Mean­while, Anisette con­tin­ued to say that An­gos­tu­ra part­nered with the Union and the work­ers and com­bined the col­lec­tive wis­dom of all par­ties with an in­ten­tion to grow.

He said this was done “in the in­ter­est of An­gos­tu­ra and by ex­ten­sion, the man­age­ment and the work­ers who will ben­e­fit from what­ev­er growth that An­gos­tu­ra has.”

An­nisette added it is note­wor­thy that An­gos­tu­ra and SWW­TU could have col­lab­o­rat­ed ef­fec­tive­ly in an econ­o­my that is on a de­cline and where con­tract work­ers are be­gin laid off.

He said that it is in­dica­tive of a new era of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions where the Union is in­clud­ed in man­age­ment de­ci­sions from the ini­tial stages, rather than be­ing in­formed af­ter­wards.

The col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach is nec­es­sary, said An­nisette. He added: “It can­not be an­tag­o­nis­tic, it can­not be we against them be­cause at the end of the day, what hap­pens in cir­cum­stances of that na­ture is that you fall by the way­side.”

An­nisette al­so wel­comed the two-shift sys­tem that will be in­tro­duced at An­gos­tu­ra. There was on­ly a one-shift sys­tem at the com­pa­ny, which was a 7 am to 4 pm. The rea­son the com­pa­ny has im­ple­ment­ed the sys­tem is with the an­tic­i­pa­tion of the fu­ture growth of the com­pa­ny.

“The two-shift sys­tem is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary for the very sur­vival and the ex­is­tence of An­gos­tu­ra and by ex­ten­sion, if An­gos­tu­ra fails, the work­force fails,” said An­nisette.


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