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OWTU to file contempt case against Petrotrin

by

#meta[ag-author]
Kevon Felmine
20181127224949
20181128
Ozzi Warwick, OWTU chief education and research officer, left, and president general Ancel Roget after the press conference at the union’s head office, Circular Road, San Fernando, yesterday.

Ozzi Warwick, OWTU chief education and research officer, left, and president general Ancel Roget after the press conference at the union’s head office, Circular Road, San Fernando, yesterday.

TONY HOWELL

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) says it will file con­tempt of court pro­ceed­ings against Petrotrin for its fail­ure to dis­cuss the cri­te­ria be­ing used to staff the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd and the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.

In a me­dia con­fer­ence at the union’s Para­mount Build­ing in San Fer­nan­do Tues­day, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said that the union was plan­ning to get the process start­ed.

Last week, the In­dus­tri­al Court ruled in favour of the OW­TU’s com­plaint that the com­pa­ny act­ed in vi­o­la­tion of Sec­tion 40(1) of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act by fail­ing in good faith to treat and to en­ter in­to ne­go­ti­a­tion with the union for the pur­pose of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly, the shut­down of the com­pa­ny and the re­trench­ment of its 4,700 em­ploy­ees. The court or­dered Petrotrin to meet with the union to dis­cuss the “is­sues re­lat­ed to the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment of the work­ers for which the com­pa­ny had a du­ty to dis­cuss with the union.”

The is­sues in­clud­ed the cri­te­ria be­ing used in the re­hir­ing process, the pro­posed struc­ture of the com­pa­ny, the work­ers’ pen­sion, sav­ings and med­ical plans, and oth­er ben­e­fits and the com­pu­ta­tion of ter­mi­na­tion pack­ages.

“The com­pa­ny re­fused to say what cri­te­ria are be­ing used in the hir­ing process and what is the whole struc­ture of the new com­pa­ny. It con­sti­tutes con­tempt of court and we will be go­ing for con­tempt of court pro­ceed­ings in re­spect of their re­fusal to an­swer those ques­tions. Re­mem­ber (Reynold) Ajod­has­ingh and (Wil­fred) Es­pinet, both mem­bers of the board of Petrotrin, are al­so mem­bers of the board of this new com­pa­ny. There­fore, they are du­ty bound to pro­vide an­swers to the ques­tions com­ing from the court. They did not an­swer,” Ro­get said.

Asked whether the ter­mi­nat­ed em­ploy­ees are be­ing pre­ferred for em­ploy­ment in the new com­pa­nies, Ro­get said the union sus­pects that may be hap­pen­ing. How­ev­er, he be­lieves there is an at­tempt to dupe the pub­lic in­to be­liev­ing the peo­ple are re­gain­ing sus­tain­able jobs when the re­al­i­ty is that they would be paid min­i­mum wage with in­ad­e­quate terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment.

“Es­sen­tial­ly, it is to get the union out be­cause it is their be­lief that if they get the union out they can wreak hav­oc. That is what they will con­sid­er to be prof­itable and suc­cess­ful.”

Ro­get added, “They com­plain about the high salaries of work­ers that Petrotrin can no longer af­ford, but it is the same Petrotrin re­sources/fi­nances they will use to pay a bat­tery of lawyers, three se­nior coun­sel, to fight against an agree­ment that they would have made.

“It is the same Petrotrin they said don’t have mon­ey. They are now fly­ing in the face of every­one, say­ing they are pre­pared to pay a CEO a quar­ter mil­lion dol­lars per month for part of the com­pa­ny and that is the ba­sic wage. They did not talk about the ben­e­fits.”

He said that in one of the new com­pa­nies, there is a pro­pos­al to have 45 man­agers where un­der Petrotrin, there were 11. He said that in the union’s pro­pos­al for the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin, that would not have been the case.

“What is hap­pen­ing there you are go­ing to have a se­lect­ed num­ber of high­ly paid peo­ple and a then a num­ber of ex­ploit­ed peo­ple. It will be likened to mod­ern-day slav­ery for yet an­oth­er time.”

Ro­get said that from De­cem­ber 1, the cur­rent pen­sion plan will be fur­ther bur­dened as 1,270 new re­tirees will be added be­cause of the ear­ly re­tire­ment of­fered in the shut­ting down of the com­pa­ny. He said al­so Gov­ern­ment had claimed that the plan was suf­fi­cient­ly fund­ed, the trustee: Re­pub­lic Bank, stat­ed oth­er­wise. He said the union was told by Petrotrin chair­man that the Gov­ern­ment will fund the plan, but the union did not trust the com­pa­ny. He added that Petrotrin could not say whether all work­ers will col­lect their sev­er­ance pack­ages on Fri­day, while there were many ca­su­al and tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees who worked for 15 to 30 years who were told that they did not qual­i­fy for sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages.

“We call on the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, who have tak­en this de­ci­sion to ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tions of the board to close Petrotrin, to do the cor­rect, fair and de­cent thing con­sis­tent with the Gov­ern­ment with the man­date to gov­ern for all of T&T to en­sure all of the work­ers you are putting on the bread­line, all of them re­ceived their ben­e­fits.”

Asked whether the OW­TU will seek to rep­re­sent work­ers of the new com­pa­nies, Ro­get said he did not want to com­ment on the union’s plan just yet.

How­ev­er, he said, “Cer­tain­ly, you can­not re­move the OW­TU from oil and gas. It’s like try­ing to re­move the “S” from Su­per­man’s chest. It’s like try­ing to re­move the white out of milk. No, that is not go­ing to hap­pen. The OW­TU was born and bred in the oil­fields and we will con­tin­ue to stay in the oil­fields.”


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