KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Em­ploy­ees at Nu­trien’s Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty are con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion fol­low­ing the fer­tilis­er gi­ant’s de­ci­sion to in­def­i­nite­ly shut down its Trinidad op­er­a­tions, amid grow­ing con­cerns over their sev­er­ance pack­ages.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that some work­ers are ex­plor­ing their le­gal op­tions af­ter learn­ing that the com­pa­ny would not be of­fer­ing en­hanced sev­er­ance ben­e­fits, leav­ing long-serv­ing em­ploy­ees con­cerned about their fi­nan­cial fu­ture.

The de­vel­op­ment fol­lows com­plaints from em­ploy­ees who pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the pro­posed sev­er­ance arrange­ments, claim­ing they stand to re­ceive less than col­leagues who were re­trenched dur­ing a sim­i­lar ex­er­cise in 2020.

Some of the af­fect­ed work­ers have spent more than two decades at the fa­cil­i­ty and have ques­tioned the for­mu­la be­ing used to cal­cu­late their pay­ments.

Mean­while, de­spite the an­nounce­ment of the in­def­i­nite clo­sure, em­ploy­ees con­tin­ue to re­port for their reg­u­lar shifts as the com­pa­ny un­der­takes work to pre­serve the fa­cil­i­ty.

One em­ploy­ee ex­plained that at­ten­tion has shift­ed to­wards prepar­ing var­i­ous sys­tems for long-term preser­va­tion.

The em­ploy­ee said, “There are cer­tain sys­tems that still need to ‘lay up’ and al­so de-in­ven­to­ry (eg cat­a­lyst re­moval) for long-term preser­va­tion strat­e­gy. The fo­cus is on those ac­tiv­i­ties.”

As of yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that de­spite their frus­tra­tions, em­ploy­ees were show­ing up for work and con­tin­u­ing their shifts as nor­mal, with main­te­nance ac­tiv­i­ties re­main­ing part of their dai­ly re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as has been the case over the past year.

Sources al­so in­di­cat­ed that it re­mains an emo­tion­al pe­ri­od for em­ploy­ees as they con­tem­plate their next steps and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing to seek al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment.

While coun­selling ser­vices have al­ways been avail­able through the com­pa­ny’s Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP), the ex­tent to which em­ploy­ees have ac­cessed that sup­port re­mains un­known be­cause par­tic­i­pa­tion is con­fi­den­tial.

The em­ploy­ee said, “Coun­selling is pri­vate so we won’t know who ac­cessed EAP.”

The un­cer­tain­ty fol­lows a town hall meet­ing ear­li­er this week, at which em­ploy­ees were in­formed that sev­er­ance pack­ages would be cal­cu­lat­ed with­out en­hanced ben­e­fits.

Work­ers sub­se­quent­ly told Guardian Me­dia that the pro­posed pay­ments were un­der­whelm­ing com­pared with those re­ceived by col­leagues who left the com­pa­ny six years ago.

One long-serv­ing em­ploy­ee pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed the clo­sure as the abrupt end of a 22-year ca­reer, ex­press­ing con­cern about his abil­i­ty to se­cure al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment and meet his fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.

Nu­trien an­nounced on Mon­day that it would in­def­i­nite­ly shut down its Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing a re­view of strate­gic al­ter­na­tives and en­gage­ment with rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers.

The Cana­di­an-based com­pa­ny cit­ed per­sis­tent nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­straints and un­cer­tain­ty as ma­jor fac­tors in­flu­enc­ing its de­ci­sion.

The an­nounce­ment fol­lowed a con­trolled shut­down of the Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty in Oc­to­ber last year, which the com­pa­ny at­trib­uted to port ac­cess re­stric­tions and the lack of a re­li­able and eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able nat­ur­al gas sup­ply.

Ac­cord­ing to Nu­trien, these chal­lenges had neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the fa­cil­i­ty’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.

The com­pa­ny pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed that near­ly all ex­ist­ing po­si­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty would be af­fect­ed by the clo­sure, al­though fi­nal de­ci­sions on in­di­vid­ual em­ploy­ees and ter­mi­na­tion dates would on­ly be made fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tions.