An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Steel Work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go is ques­tion­ing why it was ex­clud­ed from dis­cus­sions on the Gov­ern­ment’s agree­ment to ex­plore the restart of the for­mer iron and steel plant at Point Lisas, say­ing dis­placed work­ers de­served to be in­formed be­fore the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) was signed.

Union pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley said the pro­posed re­vival of the plant could bring sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to the coun­try and to hun­dreds of for­mer steel work­ers, but lament­ed that nei­ther the Gov­ern­ment nor the new own­ers shared in­for­ma­tion with the union be­fore Fri­day’s sign­ing.

“That in­for­ma­tion, while at the end of the day, if it comes to re­al­i­ty, may be in the best in­ter­est of our cit­i­zens and the coun­try, the econ­o­my, and the work­ers, the dis­placed work­ers, we are in the dark. We do not know any­thing about the com­pa­ny,” Bai­ley said.

The Gov­ern­ment signed the MOU on Fri­day with Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion to be­gin dis­cus­sions on the re­fur­bish­ment, recom­mis­sion­ing and op­er­a­tion of the for­mer iron and steel plant at Point Lisas.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers signed on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment. The agree­ment es­tab­lish­es a frame­work for fur­ther dis­cus­sions and due dili­gence fol­low­ing Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion’s ac­qui­si­tion of the plant.

The Gov­ern­ment said the project ex­tends be­yond restart­ing steel pro­duc­tion and could po­si­tion T&T as a pro­duc­er of vana­di­um, a strate­gic met­al used in aero­space and de­fence in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing mil­i­tary air­craft. It added that the project has the po­ten­tial to sup­ply up to an es­ti­mat­ed 50 per cent of Unit­ed States de­mand for vana­di­um if it pro­ceeds.

The Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Plipde­co), which owns the prop­er­ty and lands where the plant is lo­cat­ed, is al­so a par­ty to the agree­ment.

Bai­ley said the union be­lieved work­ers should have been en­gaged be­fore such a sig­nif­i­cant an­nounce­ment was made, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the years of hard­ship en­dured since the clo­sure of the steel op­er­a­tions.

“At the end of the day, the sto­ry about the steel work­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go is there for every­body to see. There’s a doc­u­men­tary. The work­ers have suf­fered, and I think this kind of in­for­ma­tion would have brought some lev­el of re­lief for those work­ers who are still dis­placed, those work­ers who are liv­ing in hope.”

He said the union would have wel­comed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the pro­pos­al be­fore the agree­ment was signed.

The pro­posed restart of the Point Lisas plant comes a decade af­ter Arcelor­Mit­tal shut down its T&T op­er­a­tions in 2016, leav­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 644 work­ers with­out jobs.

Ear­li­er this year, Bai­ley crit­i­cised the man­ner in which the com­pa­ny ex­it­ed the coun­try, ar­gu­ing that long-serv­ing em­ploy­ees were aban­doned af­ter help­ing to build the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess.