OWTU SPEAKS 2004-04-16
NATIONAL INTEREST AND FOREIGN POLICIES
I am certain that the foreign policy of the United States and of Britain is influenced by the domestic and national interests of those countries. Whether President George Bush is hunting Al Qeada or recolonising Iraq, he will relate a story, which in his modus operandi he is sure to postulate, will net back to US internal security and other interests. It is claimed that Mr. Bush is not too bright- perhaps like some other leaders whom we know but neither is he given to moving by vaps.
After ten (10) weeks on the Picket Line, the struggling ALNG Construction workers are invaded by Mr. Vaps himself with a lesson from Sir John Browne, the venerable Chairman and Lord of the Manor of BP. How Mr. Vaps was over-awed and bowled over by Sir John’s brief lecture on the issues which influence US Foreign Policy! Indeed, everybody who is involved and wishes to be informed, knows that the Foreign Policy of the United States of America is dictated majorly by the energy security requirements of the World’s only super power.
And most certainly, Trinidad & Tobago, endowed as we are with tremendous energy resources and with a most favourable geographical positioning in the Americas, should exploit every means by which we can supply the energy requirements of the USA to the mutual benefit of both countries. That is to say that our Honourable Prime Minister convinces none but the arrant fool that Trinidad & Tobago must assure the uninterrupted supply of LNG to the US consumer and the siphoning of great wealth to the profit rakers without assuring at the same time, decent pay and fair terms and conditions for workers, nationals of Trinidad and Tobago. Even Mr. Bush might agree that the security of supplies to the US must be reasonably consistent with the security of the workers in Point Fortin. Those workers have done absolutely nothing against the national interest and should have nothing to be ashamed of. If Mr. Manning wants to fix George Bush’s foreign policy agenda he must fix our domestic situation first. He must fix the situation which allows foreign investors and contractors to bleed our human and natural resources with impunity. He must contribute to strengthening those institutions and mechanisms which have traditionally intervened and have been intended to protect and promote the country’s, the peoples’ and the workers’ interests.
After the tenth (10th) week of strike action, it is not so much the national interest and the country’s mage as it is BP’s and other investors’ interests who propelled the Prime Minister, by vaps, to the Train IV strike camp. They leaned on him – BP, ALNG, Bechtel and the big local contractors. They threatened him with resurrection of the UNC from its own inflicted demise caused by corruption and thievery. They instructed him against a Sectoral Minimum Wage and Legislative amendments to liberalise the Industrial Relations Act and therefore affect a real time mechanism for representation and the Collective Bargaining Process. They instructed him to once again call out the State Protective Services to affect a breaking of the picket line and a forced resumption of work. They worked him over and he caught a Vaps.
It was supposed to be the coup de graĉe – Mr. Manning’s drop in at the strike camp. Seriously considered through, it was the most foolish and arrogant Prime Ministerial intervention that we have witnessed so far. The good manners and discipline of the strikers at the camp on Wednesday must be applauded – the Prime Minister was only midly booed.
All of that notwithstanding, we looked forward to a successful conclusion to this evening’s talks aimed at ending the impasse.
The workers and the other parties must all emerge with their heads held high.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-04-05
T&TEC AND IT'S WORKERS
Last Friday’s piece, although called in and recorded on time, was not broadcast. I am yet to know the reason. In that piece, I responded one more time to the skewed and inconclusive analyses of fat cat economic soothsayers and big business sponsored political theorists who make election promises only to turn around and condemn workers’ demands as fostering inflationary spirals and threats to the economy. By that time I had not yet heard the obviously very biased but unconvincing comments by the Central Bank Governor. A specially detailed response to those comments and the industrial banditry that Bechtel International continues to wage against the Train IV construction workers will be issued in the next few days. Back then to last Friday’s piece. That T&TEC has been operating at a deficit which is as a result of deliberate and definite government policy, is no reasonable basis on which to determine the wage of the T&TEC worker. Government policy dictates the provision of cheap electricity as one of the enticements to industrial development, foreign investment and the creation of a few jobs here and there. We are not now quarrelling about that. But we will not allow to go unchallenged, the unfounded decisions by those who know better, that T&TEC is not making money – it is operating on a deficit and that its workers are already highly paid – nonsense talk to fool the unsuspecting and illiterate.
What those in authority do not tell and which the small minded and mal-informed economists prefer to conceal are that:
T&TEC is made to supply the largest chunk of its power purchases to the high profit ISPATT operations at a tariff that is below the cost of production of electricity.
T&TEC is made to procure Natural Gas on T&TEC’s account, which it must supply to PowerGen and INNCOGEN from both of whom it must take and pay for all of the electricity generated through Government dictated Power Purchase Agreements.
These arrangements ensure very large protected profits for the Power Generators on the one hand and T&TEC’s large industrial customers on the other.
In such government directed arrangements and in conformity with conventional accounting methods and practices, T&TEC will do very well indeed to present a strong P&L statement and generate a profit - no pun intended – until workers make demands to address their own poor situations, the authorities seem comfortable with those private sector profit centered arrangements which are disadvantageous to the Trinidad & Tobago Electricity Commission and its employees.
Those among our planners and architects of our ‘2020 façade’ and who are not intractably tied hand and foot, head and heart – to private capital development orthodoxies will no doubt subscribe to T&TEC having at least a realistic, objective theoretical Statement of Affairs in which true costs and values are detailed.
And it is in such a broad picture that T&TEC’s and its workers’ contribution to economic growth – GDP and GNP – will best be measured. Or, the productive sector worker such as a T&TEC employee may well ask the pertinent question – “On what basis were non productive sector workers awarded 30% pay increases? And equally non productive managers – political and other – an average 67%?”
It is a pity that our economists are so full of nothing and that Inter-Ministerial teams and Public Sector Negotiating Committees are shooting in the dark and debilitating the potentials which workers would unleash much to the benefit of higher productivity and economic growth and competitiveness. The simpletons in charge are bent on over managing – oblivious to the fact that it is a case of not leading.
W insist though that by all reasonable means that may become necessary – the T&TEC worker and his counter part at PowerGen and else where will effect a fair and reasonable settlement in ongoing wage talks.
And we continue to extend solidarity to the Train IV LNG construction workers.