Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) 2nd Vice Pres­i­dent Reesa Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha said T&TEC work­ers are fi­nal­ly re­ceiv­ing much-need­ed fi­nan­cial re­lief.

"This has been long out­stand­ing," she added, re­spond­ing to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who an­nounced on No­vem­ber 21 in Par­lia­ment an agree­ment with the OW­TU to pro­vide new CO­LA pay­ments for week­ly and month­ly paid T&TEC work­ers. This is in ad­di­tion to $131.2 mil­lion in retroac­tive pay­ments, al­so sched­uled be­tween this month and Feb­ru­ary 2026.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha not­ed that the CO­LA is­sue orig­i­nat­ed from ne­go­ti­a­tions for the 2015 to 2017 col­lec­tive pe­ri­od. How­ev­er, de­spite a court rul­ing on this mat­ter, she said man­age­ment had re­fused to ap­ply the CO­LA pay­ments.

"The judg­ment in­struct­ed man­age­ment to ap­ply Clause 20 of the col­lec­tive agree­ment, which speaks to CO­LA, and it was un­for­tu­nate that man­age­ment’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion was that CO­LA is to re­main as is."

Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha, who has been lead­ing the charge for T&TEC work­ers, said the is­sue went un­ad­dressed for ten years un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"So, af­ter ten years of be­ing on a CO­LA that was frozen, I am very hap­py that the T&TEC work­ers could fi­nal­ly have this mat­ter re­solved. As you may or may not be aware, we are still stuck on 2014 salaries, and this is some­thing that we re­al­ly need to bring some im­me­di­ate form of fi­nan­cial re­lief to our mem­ber­ship."

She added that in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions at T&TEC had been at a low point but not­ed there have al­ready been changes un­der the new board.

"This is not a sit­u­a­tion where the union wants what the union wants and ex­pects that to hap­pen. All the union has been ask­ing for in the last ten years is that man­age­ment in T&TEC ad­here to the col­lec­tive agree­ment. That's a bind­ing doc­u­ment, and that has not been hap­pen­ing for the last ten years. I am hap­py to re­port that fol­low­ing our meet­ing with the board when they came in ear­li­er this year, there was a com­mit­ment that they are go­ing to en­sure that the prin­ci­ples and prac­tices of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions are up­held and that there is ad­her­ence to the col­lec­tive agree­ment not on­ly in OW­TU but across the board."

She said work­ers were now be­ing treat­ed with re­spect, dig­ni­ty, and fair­ness, with changes ben­e­fit­ing both union mem­bers and the pub­lic.

"I am very hap­py to see that we have an ad­min­is­tra­tion that is here and who has com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing fair­ness and eq­ui­ty and ad­her­ence to col­lec­tive agree­ments across the board," she said, com­mend­ing line min­is­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath and Min­is­ter Clyde El­der.

Padarath had said that the "his­toric" Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment led to the first tranche of retroac­tive pay­ments be­ing de­posit­ed on No­vem­ber 18, bring­ing long-over­due jus­tice to 3,000 week­ly and month­ly paid staff.