Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Steel­work­ers gath­ered out­side the closed Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty on Wednes­day night, hold­ing a can­dle­light vig­il to mark ten years since the shut­down of the steel plant that once stood as a cor­ner­stone of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s heavy in­dus­tri­al sec­tor. The union al­so re­newed calls for jus­tice for the hun­dreds of work­ers dis­placed when the plant closed.

Pres­i­dent of the Steel Work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SWUTT), Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, told work­ers and sup­port­ers the an­niver­sary was a painful re­minder of what he de­scribed as the un­just ter­mi­na­tion of em­ploy­ees when the com­pa­ny ceased op­er­a­tions in 2016.

“To­day marks ten years since that ill-fat­ed day when the com­pa­ny ter­mi­nat­ed the ser­vices of each and every sin­gle met­al em­ploy­ee,” Bai­ley said dur­ing the vig­il.

Ac­cord­ing to Bai­ley, work­ers lost their jobs with­out re­ceiv­ing sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits de­spite years of ser­vice un­der de­mand­ing in­dus­tri­al con­di­tions.

“Not on­ly did they ter­mi­nate us, but they ter­mi­nat­ed us with­out any sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fit—no mon­ey for the years of ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice, the years we en­dured the noise, the heat and the dust,” he said.

Be­hind the gath­er­ing work­ers, the once-busy plant re­mained dark.

Bai­ley said the can­dles lit by union mem­bers sym­bol­ised both the pas­sage of time and the work­ers’ con­tin­u­ing strug­gle for jus­tice.

“If you look at the plant be­hind us, it is in to­tal dark­ness. This light we have lit here rep­re­sents every year that this in­jus­tice has been al­lowed to con­tin­ue,” he said.

He added that the vig­il al­so ho­n­oured for­mer work­ers who have died since the plant’s clo­sure.

“This can­dle rep­re­sents each and every fall­en broth­er and sis­ter who along the way would have died—whether from ill­ness re­lat­ed to the pro­fes­sion or the hard­ship caused by the sit­u­a­tion.”

Bai­ley stressed that the union re­mains de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue its fight.

“We are here to show the coun­try that the Steel­work­ers Union and its mem­bers are still alive, and we will not be si­lenced un­til the day jus­tice is served,” he said.

Bai­ley al­so used the oc­ca­sion to call on the Gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene in the long-run­ning dis­pute and re­solve the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion for af­fect­ed work­ers.

“We are call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to do what the pre­vi­ous regime failed to recog­nise,” he said.

He ap­pealed specif­i­cal­ly to the Min­is­ter of Labour and oth­er min­is­ters with trade union back­grounds to use their in­flu­ence to ad­dress the mat­ter.

“We are pe­ti­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment of the day to en­sure that this sit­u­a­tion is rec­ti­fied,” he added.

Bai­ley al­so thanked sev­er­al unions that at­tend­ed in sol­i­dar­i­ty, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union, the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion.

The Arcelor­Mit­tal steel plant at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate was of­fi­cial­ly closed in March 2016 af­ter the multi­na­tion­al steel gi­ant filed for bank­rupt­cy pro­tec­tion for its Trinidad op­er­a­tions.

The com­pa­ny cit­ed pro­longed loss­es, de­clin­ing glob­al steel prices and mount­ing debt as key rea­sons for the shut­down.

The clo­sure re­sult­ed in the im­me­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion of about 600 work­ers, while hun­dreds of con­trac­tors and ser­vice providers were al­so af­fect­ed.

At the time, the shut­down sent shock­waves through the coun­try’s en­er­gy-based in­dus­tri­al sec­tor and the wider Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, where steel pro­duc­tion had been a ma­jor eco­nom­ic con­trib­u­tor since the plant opened in the 1980s.

Since the clo­sure, for­mer work­ers and the union have con­tin­ued to pur­sue claims re­lat­ed to sev­er­ance and oth­er em­ploy­ment ben­e­fits.

Re­flect­ing on the decade that has passed, Bai­ley said work­ers are de­ter­mined that the strug­gle will not con­tin­ue in­def­i­nite­ly.

“In the Bible there were 40 years in the wilder­ness. We are not go­ing to be 40 years in the wilder­ness. Our in­ten­tion is to be ten years in the wilder­ness,” he said.

“Nev­er sur­ren­der.”