Per­ma­nent se­nior staff em­ploy­ees of Stork Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices who went against the ad­vice of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union and ac­cept­ed Vol­un­tary Sep­a­ra­tion En­hance­ment Pack­ages (VSEP), have now found them­selves in hot wa­ters.

The em­ploy­ees, who staged a protest out­side of the com­pa­ny's head­quar­ters in Point Lisas, are up­set af­ter the com­pa­ny in­formed them that their VSEP will be sub­ject­ed to a 25 per cent tax from the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

Among those who broke ranks and took the of­fer was for­mer shop stew­ard of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union Learie Licor­ish.

In an in­ter­view, Licor­ish said VSEP was of­fered to 50 per­ma­nent work­ers from the Scaf­fold­ing de­part­ment at Point Lisas and Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare.

How­ev­er, he said the in­for­ma­tion was with­held from the Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare work­ers and af­ter be­ing pre­sent­ed with an en­hanced pack­age of VSEP, 20 of them agreed to ac­cept the of­fer.

"The work­ers at Point Lisas had more in­for­ma­tion than us and they did not ac­cept VSEP," Licor­ish said.

Se­nior su­per­vi­sor at the Scaf­fold­ing de­part­ment Vi­vian Hutch said the de­ci­sion to ac­cept the of­fer was based on a promise of en­hance­ment from the com­pa­ny. He said, "We were giv­en an agree­ment that we will be paid a cer­tain amount of mon­ey. (Name called) told us the pack­age will not be taxed. Some of us got a 15 per cent en­hance­ment and oth­ers got a 20 per cent en­hance­ment. The agree­ment we made with Stork was that no tax will be paid on this mon­ey. We signed a doc­u­ment, we asked if the mon­ey will be taxed and they said any­thing un­der $300,000 will not be taxed. On the fi­nal day of agree­ment when we were sup­posed to re­ceive our cheque, they called and said the cheque is at the Board of In­land Rev­enue and they will be tak­ing a 25 per cent tax," Hutch said.

Say­ing the tax­a­tion was un­fair, Hutch called for a re­open­ing of the ne­go­ti­a­tion for VSEP.