De­spite be­ing faced with pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters for defama­tion and tres­pass­ing, for­mer work­ers of Lennox Pe­tro­le­um con­tin­ued their protests for out­stand­ing back­pay on New Year’s Eve.

From around 9:30 am, the work­ers gath­ered out­side the home of Wayne Per­sad, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Lennox Pe­tro­le­um where they protest­ed for over two hours.

The com­pa­ny has been man­dat­ed by the In­dus­tri­al Court and the Court of Ap­peal to pay retroac­tive pay to the work­ers but the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union says de­spite the court or­der, the com­pa­ny has not is­sued any pay­ments.

Un­der the watch­ful eyes of the po­lice, the for­mer work­ers marched in a cir­cle out­side the house at Sumadh Gar­dens, as they called on their em­ploy­er to pay what is due.

They fol­lowed COVID-19 pro­to­cols and did not at­tempt to en­ter Per­sad’s home.

Sgt Di­no from the Mara­bel­la po­lice ar­rived with a team and ad­vised the work­ers that they will face charges if they broke health reg­u­la­tions or any oth­er law.

But chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer at the OW­TU Lin­don Men­doza as­sured that they had no in­ten­tion of break­ing the law. He pro­vid­ed copies of the court doc­u­ment to the se­nior of­fi­cer as proof that they had won judge­ments against the com­pa­ny for out­stand­ing back pay.

Men­doza said they in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue peace­ful pick­et­ing un­til the com­pa­ny paid the work­ers. 

He al­so de­nied claims by the com­pa­ny that they had ap­pealed the mat­ter and had sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the court about the de­tails of the judge­ment.

“We have all doc­u­ments and ev­i­dence. They can pro­duce no doc­u­ments. If there is doubt about this, I chal­lenge you to fact check with the courts. These are re­al doc­u­ments we are pre­sent­ing,” Men­doza said.

He added, “They are not speak­ing the truth and they are play­ing for time. Jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied. Every day these work­ers are dis­en­fran­chised is a day lost in pos­ses­sion of their prop­er­ty. Their monies are sub­ject­ed to de­pre­ci­ate be­cause of in­fla­tion and the com­pa­ny ben­e­fits from in­ter­est earned on that mon­ey.”

He al­so said that the com­pa­ny has been at­tempt­ing to in­tim­i­date in­di­vid­ual work­ers by is­su­ing pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters.

“These pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters are be­ing treat­ed as red her­rings. It is meant to in­tim­i­date work­ers and to in­stil fear in work­ers so they won’t pur­sue what is right­ful­ly theirs. The com­pa­ny is say­ing they made defam­a­to­ry state­ments and tres­pass­ing but no such things oc­curred and there is no ba­sis,” Men­doza said.

He added, “The union will as­sist all work­ers and seek cost and dam­ages for the ma­li­cious per­se­cu­tion of any work­er.”

The com­pa­ny, in its lat­est me­dia re­lease, de­nied be­ing in con­tempt of the In­dus­tri­al Court Or­der.

The com­pa­ny said its ap­peal is sched­uled to be heard on Mon­day, June 28, 2021, in the Court of Ap­peal.

The com­pa­ny said it ap­plied to the In­dus­tri­al Court for an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Or­der dat­ed Ju­ly 8, 2020. The com­pa­ny said the law does not per­mit ex-work­ers to pick­et in front of an em­ploy­er’s home.

Say­ing it has “time and again in­di­cat­ed its will­ing­ness to pay,” the com­pa­ny said, “The OW­TU must be aware of the com­mer­cial re­al­i­ties of op­er­at­ing with a pan­dem­ic, which is made even more dif­fi­cult to do busi­ness be­cause of the rep­u­ta­tion­al loss to cred­i­tors and cus­tomers caused by the on­go­ing protests and me­dia at­ten­tion.