DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed leg­is­la­tion aimed at restor­ing the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union’s (OW­TU) rights fol­low­ing Petrotrin’s 2018 re­struc­tur­ing, re­ject­ing claims that the mea­sure breach­es the Con­sti­tu­tion or in­fringes on the rights of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Ltd and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing em­ploy­ees.

Speak­ing dur­ing de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing and Guaracara Re­fin­ing Vest­ing) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued that it was the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion—not the cur­rent gov­ern­ment—that vi­o­lat­ed work­ers’ rights by fail­ing to pre­serve suc­ces­sor rights when Petrotrin was dis­man­tled.

The Prime Min­is­ter was re­spond­ing to con­cerns raised by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who ar­gued that the leg­is­la­tion im­prop­er­ly in­ter­feres with mat­ters that should be de­ter­mined by the In­dus­tri­al Court and im­pos­es union rep­re­sen­ta­tion on work­ers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed those ar­gu­ments out­right.

“The mem­ber said that we are tres­pass­ing on the In­dus­tri­al Court. What kind of lawyer is that?” she quipped.

Through­out her con­tri­bu­tion, she re­peat­ed­ly re­ferred to Young as “King Liar,” ac­cus­ing him of mis­lead­ing the pub­lic about both the coun­try’s fi­nances and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Petrotrin’s re­struc­tur­ing.

She re­ject­ed Op­po­si­tion crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal man­age­ment, in­stead blam­ing the PNM for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cur­rent debt bur­den.

“When we left gov­ern­ment in 2015, debt was $75.4 bil­lion dol­lars. When they demit­ted of­fice, debt dou­bled to $144.8 bil­lion dol­lars... Debt to GDP, the min­is­ter men­tioned, the high­est ever. Why? Be­cause of you. Be­cause of your gov­ern­ment. Here are the num­bers: debt to GDP moved from 42.9 per cent in 2015 when we demit­ted of­fice. That moved to 82.8 per cent when they demit­ted of­fice.”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so chal­lenged the Op­po­si­tion’s long­stand­ing claim that Petrotrin was mere­ly re­struc­tured rather than shut­down.

Cit­ing fig­ures from Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd’s an­nu­al re­ports, she said Petrotrin record­ed prof­its of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.697 bil­lion in its fi­nal year and ar­gued that the state-owned com­pa­ny was ef­fec­tive­ly dis­man­tled when its as­sets and op­er­a­tions were trans­ferred to new­ly cre­at­ed en­ti­ties.

While ac­cept­ing that gov­ern­ments can re­struc­ture state en­ter­pris­es, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the rights of work­ers and their unions should have been pro­tect­ed dur­ing the tran­si­tion.

She point­ed to pre­vi­ous ex­am­ples, in­clud­ing Petrotrin’s ab­sorp­tion of Trin­topec in 1993 and re­forms in­volv­ing re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, where suc­ces­sor rights were pre­served.

“And to­day you come to jus­ti­fy why you closed down but not once did you tell us why you did not con­sid­er suc­ces­sor­ship rights for the work­ers as has been done in the past. You have the prece­dent.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, the cen­tral is­sue is not the trans­fer of as­sets or the cre­ation of suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies, but the fail­ure to car­ry over rights work­ers had se­cured through decades of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing.

She ac­cused the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion of de­lib­er­ate­ly weak­en­ing the OW­TU by leav­ing work­ers with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion af­ter the re­struc­tur­ing.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the leg­is­la­tion seeks to re­store those rights and pre­vent fu­ture gov­ern­ments or em­ploy­ers from ex­tin­guish­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments through cor­po­rate re­struc­tur­ing.

She ar­gued that with­out suc­ces­sor rights, decades of ne­go­ti­at­ed pro­tec­tions could dis­ap­pear overnight sim­ply be­cause a com­pa­ny changes its le­gal struc­ture.

The Prime Min­is­ter main­tained that the bill is con­sis­tent with the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act and es­tab­lished le­gal prece­dent. She point­ed to pre­vi­ous court rul­ings that up­held suc­ces­sor rights and in­sist­ed Par­lia­ment has the au­thor­i­ty to en­act leg­is­la­tion pro­tect­ing work­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

The leg­is­la­tion was ul­ti­mate­ly passed with amend­ments fol­low­ing a brief de­bate in the Low­er House. It re­ceived 26 votes in favour, with no votes against and 13 ab­sten­tions.