OWTU SPEAKS 2006-08-02
Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks! It is without doubt that the Port Mortem on the Campbell Twins – Tylar and Tylin – today, would have done no more than the usual after – death examination to determine the immediate physical cause of death of those two nine month old babies. Another baby – the six year old child – must have been affected – we may not see any immediate signs – in very fundamental and important ways by the abandonment of adult responsibility for the care, protection and nurturing of the young and innocent.
Following the autopsies, charges may be laid against adults and inquests held but that we must dispute is not enough. Enough of a sociological inquisition is never done to fully examine the precursors – the antedecendents – the preceding circumstances which seem to have become normal but contrary to what they used to be when we had real parents and guardians and grandparents, god parents and neighbours and good villagers and caring communities. Gone are those days, it seems! Today, every body is too busy to care and it seems too, that we have become so perfunctory in whatever we would like to appear to be doing that callousness is not an understated characteristic that we have come to earn and criminal might well be a description that is not misplaced.
How in heaven’s name do we leave a lighted candle or kerosene lamp near breeze blowing curtains in a child’s room? How in hell do we turn the cooking gas on and then go searching for the mechanical lighter or matches? What could take good sense away and have us leave our unsupervised and even sleeping young children while we go down the road somewhere?
How do big people lose the key to our brains and allow toddlers and first steppers access to open water filled buckets and tubs? Have we gone mad or are we the ones to be protected and cared for? Where have all the parents, grand parents and good people gone? Is there any body minding the store anymore? Who is family and care giver? Or have we become so individualistic and self centered that we take care for ourselves only?
Which Granny or Grandpa, Auntie or Nenen, Decent Mother or even putative father or Guardian would leave nine month old infants in the care of a six year old infant?
When did we become so careless – so don’t’ – care – a- damn – so negligent? All that we seem to have worked hard for, loved and cherished, seem to have gone or going – family, good neighbourliness, community – Institutions?
Would we again be responsible, take charge and take care?
Negligence and abandonment must not take another life.
Have a Good evening. Look out for the children, save the youth. I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU speaks.
OWTU SPEAKS 2006-08-04
Employers who respect and treat their workers well shall always be able to count on those workers’ reciprocal respect, loyalty and commitment, Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks! Every weekend, it has now become popular, there is some celebration or retreat if sorts at Petrotrin’s Beach Camp $100m Executive suites at Palo Seco.
Last weekend it was the turn of some Board Members and the ELT – ie – the Executive Leadership Team of Petrotrin. They retreated to the Southern Beach Front and helped themselves to some good waters and vittles. They frolicked as they celebrated the excellent 3rd Q performance which the Company realized from favourable world prices and the diligent application to duty by the employees of Petrotrin. An unaccustomed participant and observer remarked that one would have hardly thought that the Petrotrin worker contributed in any way to the Company’s successful run, the way the ELT was lauding it over and calling attention to themselves.
And as if to mark the celebrated performance by something significant, the ELT drivers decided on a further disorganization of Petrotrin’s unorganized management structures. ‘Nothing for the workers’ – is their fiendish shrill. The same workers have prevented the dangerous high pressure, high temperature Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Unit from exploding a second time since 1991. Yes, we make bold to say that an important high pressure oil line on the Cat Cracker was found earlier this week, to have a wall thickness of 3mm – some 22 millimeters thinner than UOP specifications would demand. We were brought perilously close to another disaster which would have been the result of management neglect, failure, leaderlessness and spite for its employees.
Our lives continue to be at stake and we will continue to demand justice, fairness and equity.
Petrotrin can do better and will be made to do better. Petrotrin continues to benefit fully from the efforts of a committed work force and the high oil price environment in both downstream and upstream operations. The very favourable profit recorded thus far was mainly due to improved margins which are worker influenced, a higher sales volume compared to previously budgeted figures and higher average sales price for refined products.
Geopolitical constraints in the Middle East and refining constraints are more than likely to keep prices strong during the US summer driving season and beyond. The Petrotrin workers’ contribution to the company’s very good fortunes must be recognized and well compensated for. We insist on fairness and equity.
At its meeting held on June 28th 2006 the Petrotrin Board deliberated at length on the issue of Wage Negotiations and Manpower reduction – a debate which is essentially led by private sector conglomerate representatives whom for the time being we will not name.
The Board decided that it must ensure shareholder support especially because of this being an election year and that employee numbers must be appreciably reduced and that there should be a wage settlement of no more than 10% and a dollar figure buy out equivalent to 3%.
OWTU SPEAKS 2006 -08-07
Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks! There is hardly a workplace and state enterprise sector – where employee enthusiasm is not threatened by unfair practices and anti-worker policies. Almost everywhere there is a protest taking place or being organizes, and all of them – every last one of them can very directly be related to the employer’s stringent mandate to effect the meanest of changes to wage and salary and general terms and conditions of employment for public and state enterprise workers.
And as if to emphasize who is in control, it is the private sector conglomerate representative on state boards who direct what is done and how it is done in the Enterprise’s relationship with the Unions and its employees. The strategic interest of the private sector conglomerate is often the catalyst that activates the policy direction which its representative on the Board dictates for the State enterprise. Petrotrin is a perfect example of Massa controlling power while the natives occupy office.’
Petrotrin’s Board met on June 28 at 10.20 a.m. and before she left at 12.15 p.m., the private interest representative, requested and received immediately, a status report on the negotiation with the OWTU. A communication strategy for negotiations was also presented as a mechanism to misinform and subject the workers to contrary influences. ‘The Board deliberated at length on the issue’ according to extracts of the Minutes of the meeting. Private sector efficiency and productivity modules measured that the manpower numbers were too high and workers’ demands though affordable, should be rejected at this time in the context of Petrotrin’s future investment programme. The Management was instructed to immediately introduce measures to reduce manpower; prepare a contingency plan in the event of a strike, deadlock the negotiations and report a dispute to the Minister of Labour and ensure at that level a wage settlement at 10% and an offer of a one time buyout of 3% of current wage. Massa’s representative’s instructions having been issued, the tyrant left the meeting at exactly 12.15 p.m.
The lady is no doubt out of her depth. She failed at marketing and selling transport fuels at a sister state enterprise more than a decade ago. She is today more attuned to the fizz that diffuses from the sweet drink bottle but she is certainly confounded by the intricate issues of an integrated Oil Company such as is Petrotrin.
In response to the recalcitrance and arrogant posture of those in charge and in control, the OWTU reiterates that we will not accept anything less than that which is fair and equitable; we are not interested in their wanting to buyout anything because we will not sell-out anything.
Additionally, we know that they are spending like mad including over-invoicing for strike preparation. They will never be sufficiently prepared – certainly not with the level of inexperienced Management Staff whose loyalty they are not certain they can rely on. But even so, we have not contemplated strike action as a matter of first resort. We certainly do not wish to interrupt the Gasoline Optimisation Programme, the other aspects of Refinery Modernisation and Efficiency Uplifts and Production Improvement Programmes which are in the pipeline at this time. We know that Petrotrin cannot afford protracted disturbances at this time. We must be more interested in Petrotrin’s well being and success than the spiteful and malicious mismanagers who direct and control it. And of course, we know that any major strike at Petrotrin will have consequences for other state entities and expensive political consequences too.
We are hopeful that good sense will prevail and that the Petrotrin Workers’ demands are settled soon on the basis of reasonableness and equity.
Our next piece will begin to examine the Private sector’s grab for Petrotrin’s workshops and Maintenances Services – Shades of BWIA – outsource with Petro Sauce. It should’nt be allowed.
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.
OWTU SPEAKS 2006-08-09
Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks. Remember the saying – ‘Do so ent like so?’ That saying is as old fashioned as the farthing, the hapenny and penny that were paid to my father, Ewart ‘Posie’ Williams’ father, Patrick Manning’s father Arnold -, and so many other labourers in the oil, sugar manufacturing and agricultural industries when sugar was king and those labourers were the hapless subjects at the manor of the colonial overlords.
The old fashioned prescription of cutting and freezing wages and drastically reducing public spending, even on social services – health and education – is as antiquated as those 1988-1993 World Bank – IMF measures which were engineered and contrived not so much as to affect the high inflation and negative growth and zero development which afflicted us as they were designed to impoverish a growing middle class and drive everybody back to low wages and those days of the labourers being drawers of water and hewers of wood. Remember the names – Ewart ‘Posie’ Williams and Jerry Hospedales as willing native concocters of those 1988-1993 IMF-World Bank Prescriptions? They were ones who served as window – dressing country sub – governors or some such dubious posts on these IFI’s. Are we surprised at the old fashioned ‘devil-take – the –hindmost’ position taken by our Central Bank Governor today? Can you now put the old saying – ‘Do so ent like so’ – in context? Of course, we all can! Our Governor of our Central Bank is one of those top officials of state including Government Ministries and Members of both Houses of parliament, top Public Servants and others all of whom received hefty increases on salaries and perquisites which were not unreasonable. They enthusiastically accepted their pay increases in March of this year when food prices had already risen by 22% between November 2005 and the end February 2006 and headline inflation was at 8.65 %.
These pay increases averaged between 35%-63% and were retroactive to 2003 in some cases. We feel certain that these economic factors: inflation and rising living costs were duly considered when these high riders’ emoluments were being fixed. And, what was good for Governor, Prime Minister, Conrad, CPO, Mook and Crook was given over-riding consideration above large official salary increases and their being contributory to an inflation spiral.
Well, Mr. Governor we have taken special note of your causing your ancestors and others like Arnold, Grandpa Enil to be revolted in the graves on the timeliness of your ingratitude. But know this: ‘What is good for the goose, must also be good for the gander’. If you were to feel ashamed and give back your very generous salary increase, Energy workers we still demand and get, on equity, that which they are entitled and deserve. Aluta Continua!
Have a peaceful evening. I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.
OWTU SPEAKS 2006-08-11
We have decided that the half informed position on inflation and the unprincipled and opportunistic assault on collective bargaining and wage increases will not escape unscathed. Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks!
Everybody who is big in the dance “the Petro Dollar dance’ has had his already handsome package increased by between 35% and 65%: Cabinet Ministers, all members of Parliament – House of Representatives and the Senate, Members of the Tobago House of Assembly, Mayors and Chairmen of Municipal Corporations, Chief Personnel Officer, Top Public Servants, Judges of the Industrial Court. All of these and others who fall under the purview of the Salaries Review Commission have recently been awarded their very generous pay increases and adjustments to their perquisites without any ‘inflation red flag’ being raised by anybody. These pay hikes, most of them, were retroactive to 2003 July and one official’s back pay which he received on March 11, five months ago, was approximately $700K. All the CEO’s, Executive Directors and top Management personnel in both the State Enterprise and Private Sectors awarded themselves extra ordinarily high salary adjustments, Performance Bonuses and other monetary rewards with supposedly no adverse effects on inflation being considered. Now, as the workers seek to have their share of the pie, every Governor and his minion comprador see the specter of an immediate economic collapse precipitated by a ‘wage price’ fuelled inflation.
The Central Bank Governor is still steeped, it seems, in IMF/World Bank orthodoxies which has set out to screw workers in the eye back in 1988/1989 with a skewed assumption of what the RULC – the Relative Unit Labour Cost – should be. Mr. Governor was very much a co-author of the IMF prescriptions against us then and he has the same motley small crowd of opportunistic anti-worker supported now. We shall not be moved! We will not be moved!
Headline inflation at 8.65% and the near 50% increase in the price of food and other living advantage our wages may have had.
We reject any suggestion that the increase in the national minimum wage to $9 some two years has brought any real relief to the unorganized and more exploited workers in the country. Nor have construction rates of pay increased to the extent of causing any appreciable pull on wage rates anywhere else in the economy.
The Central Bank Governor’s old fashioned prescription of freezing wages and freeing up prices is no less in the mould of IMF antiquated big-business policy than the 1998 removal of price controls and abolition of subsidies. It is no less abominable than the redistribution of wealth from those who have little and none to those who have plenty.
We will not be moved and we shall have our demands for fairness and equity respected and settled – settled soon too! Thank God it’s Friday.
Have a Good Evening and happy and joyful weekend. Look out for the children! I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks!
OWTU SPEAKS 2006 – 08 – 14
Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks! What authority does the Public Sector Negotiating Committee have over the collective bargaining process in Trinidad and Tobago? Unlike the Salaries Review Commission which is identified in our Supreme Law – the Constitution of the Country – the Public Sector Negotiating Committee has no real basis and existence in law. And whatever moral authority it may have had, immediately evaporated upon the six Ministers and Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) who constitute the PSNC, accepting their hefty salary adjustments last March and retroactive to 2003 July. What is good for the Goose is good for the Gander except that the Geese in the PSNC, the Cabinet and Central Bank are emphasizing different strokes for different folks and subscribe to a philosophy which, it seems advocates that price gourging and incomes distribution have a morality of its own and power advantage of their own over wages. That skewed philosophy also facilitates the shameless declaration by some – of their impecunious state – and as a consequence, their demands for state disbursement of funds to discharge their expensive requirements.
Are workers and the poor who because of an unfair system have been condemned to impecunity – do they have access to judicial review of PSNC-State Management fiat which instructs that wage earners receive the crumbs after the very-well-to-do and the privileged have taken the sumptuous bread? Do we resort to strikes and protest action which if they are to be effective – by their very nature – can be very disruptive and painful? Do we engage in marches and street demonstrations which are being desecrated by opportunist politicians who were corrupt in government, divisive and splintered in opposition and becoming desperate and wild in a bid to resurrect their discredited selves?
Seems to us that the traditional trade union course of action – independent of the corrupt anti-worker political parties – in government and opposition; disciplined mass action protests by workers across the state and private sectors, community organizations, farmers and youth and women’s organizations. Such an action is planned for August 25th in Port of Spain six days before the 44th Anniversary of National Independence on August 31, 2006.
Yes, on Friday 25th August, genuine labour and the farmers and community organizations will take their grievances to Port of Spain. We will demonstrate against high and escalating food prices, the abandonment of food and agricultural development, an arbitrary freeze and stringent restraint on wages, destruction of communities, degradation of our natural environment and dislocation of the people among other wrongs and injustices against workers and the poor.
Friday August 25th – Port of Spain. All workers unionized and unrepresented. Farmers, Youth Students, Community Groups, unemployeds. Come, you are invited! Let us march for bread, justice and peace – against high food prices and an inequitable distribution of the country’s enormous wealth. Say ‘no’ to the corrupt opportunist politicians and stand up for T & T.
Have a good evening. Look out for the children. Save the Youth.
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.
OWTU SPEAKS 2006-08-18
Thank God it’s Friday! Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks.
Our hearts bleed for Guyana. The gangland type executions and massacre which took place at Kaietur News on August 8 – ten days ago – could hardly properly characterize the kind of people we have been on the islands and the South American coast washed by the Caribbean Sea. Our once very peaceful and happy go lucky people are now being visited by a blight – a new phenomenon – whose thirst for blood seems insatiable like the addicts crave for drugs to have him ascend back to his first ‘high’ – on inglorious excursion to no where. It is destroying the fibre which captured the spirit of a people whom our early labour leaders identified as the leading nuclei in the establishment of ‘West Indian nationhood’, as they considered federation and independence at that time. In 1926 in then British Guiana, our early labour leaders had conferenced on the matter of our English speaking West Indian Islands and Guyana uniting in their common political and economic interests with the land and other natural resources of Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago providing the major economic basis for that relationship. Today, eighty (80) years later these said three leading territories are the most ravaged by drugs, guns, murders, corruption and other forms of violence and criminal activity.
We are surprised that Guyana has turned to the Trinidad and Tobago authorities for help in an area in which those authorities have themselves appeared woefully helpless and hopeless in our local situation. But say what – ‘a drowning man will perhaps clutch at anything nearby’.
So, we seem headed to having a new constitution and a used Prime Minister as Executive President. How soon will all of that take place? And to what extent are the views of the ordinary people going to be encouraged and heard? Should we not establish a Commission that will visit all our nooks and crannies and hear all our real people before we go to the Parliament?
Seems to us today that first Prime Minister – Dr. Eric Williams possessed extra ordinary qualifications which allowed him to get away and have his way with all the arrogance that seemed a blessing at that time. We feel certain today that the pomposity of present heads will not get away so easily. There is a new mood, spirit and determination gathering among a long suffering people that will not be easily moved. We shall not be moved! Like the tree that’s planted by the waters, we shall not be moved.
All workers who are threatened with wage freeze and ordered restraint; all the working poor and unemployed whose backs are bending under murderous high prices for food, shelter and health; all farmers and community organizations and the poor and dispossessed – join the real march of the Unions for Bread, Justice, Equity and Peace next Friday, August 25th beginning at 8.15 a.m. from Aranguez Savannah to Port of Spain.
Have a decent and crime free weekend everybody. Good evening.
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.
OWTU SPEAKS 2006 – 08 -23
We have had enough rain and showers of blessing over the past few days to reasonably expect a fair day for our march for Bread, Justice and Equity on Friday 25th August – the day after tomorrow.
Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks! The Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union is again called upon to defend and promote the social and economic interests of its members and workers generally, retirees/pensioners, the farmers and micro businesses, unemployeds, underemployeds and the poor.
The OWTU is called upon to demonstrate on Friday August 25th, its dissatisfaction, indeed its deep discontent with the inequity with which the economic pie is being distributed.
The OWTU is all its members and therefore, it is all the members of the OWTU who are called to duty in their own defence and to make a complaint against the inequitable distribution of the financial and economic resources which they have so manfully and diligently built. All of the members of the OWTU except the ones whom we have excused for strategically essential reasons, are called to march from Aranguez Savannah at 8.15 a.m. into the capital, Port of Spain, to convey to the powers that be the dissatisfaction which the workers and the people feel. And the members of the OWTU have chosen for the time being to be not provoked into taking more decisive and economically painful industrial action. For the time being! We will march one day and progressively engage in other activity the next until there is reasonableness, fair play and equity on the part of the powers that be.
The OWTU continues to internalize and be influenced by the truth of Eugene Debs’ assessment that:
“Ten thousand times has the labour movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again, deceived by politicians, preyed upon by grafters, repudiated by renegades, bled by leeches but, not withstanding all this, it is today the most vital, potential power this planet has ever known, its historic mission of emancipating the workers and the poor of the world from the thralldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as the rising of the first light of the dawn.”
Eugene Debs May 1, 1904.
This is so relevant as we witness the anti-inflation fancy footworks of Governors, politicians of the two prominent political shades and the unfair and corrupt framers of public policy.
But the workers and the poor will overcome!
OWTU SPEAKS 2006 AUGUST 28
Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks!
Today, we might just lower the tempo a little bit but we aim to continue to be as incisive as last Friday’s intervention was.
There seems to be a good news all around regarding economic growth and expansion. The social landscape is gloomy though when one attempts to measure how much of that economic growth and expansion might be identified with realized but miniscule development such as has happened and that may be reasonably juxtaposed with the boom in the level of poverty. In the late 1960’s through to the early 80’s, the campaign by civil society organizations was for a distribution of the wealth and national resources such that all of the people could be brought into the loop of growing fortunes. It did not happen! The opposite was the case with forced redistribution of wealth from the working poor and destitute to the well to do and powerful when the bubble burst in mid-1980’s and Adjustment Programmes were instituted.
But the good news today – good to whom is another matter- the news today is that there continues to be strong economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) the region will enjoy its fourth consecutive year of economic growth since 2002.
In a statement issued at the end of July, last month, ECLAC said that the Latin American and Caribbean region’s GDP – Gross Domestic Product – will grow by five percent in 2006 and that Caribbean nations are expected to grow by six point three percent (6.3%). Of course these are average numbers across the countries of the Caribbean which Trinidad and Tobago leads well ahead of the rest with a GDP well above 7.5%. One may choose to avoid use of the word ‘boom’ but growth at that magnitude is the envy of many who are currently better positioned than we are in terms of their development – and we cannot over emphasize that development is really about people – how they live; the conditions in which they live; their access to decent housing, health and medical services, educational advancement, their safety and security, levels of gainful employment and the physical infrastructure which will facilitate these.
It is therefore in these regards and more that we say that any development which we have realized is miniscule and not commensurably identified with the tremendous economic growth and expansion that have favoured Trinidad and Tobago since we hoisted our own flag forty four (44) years ago. Indeed, our economic growth and expansion continue to be skewed in favour of international capital particularly through the Multinational Companies, the Managers of that capital and their interests in both our Private and state enterprise sectors and their crony politician defenders in government and opposition alike.
That is why we marched from Aranguez to Woodford Square last Friday. And we are coming again – soon! Until there is Equity and Justice in the distribution of our economic and financial fortunes – the national pie – the bread – we will not keep the peace and pretend an existence of social equilibrium. We will march and demonstrate and make enough noise to have all our issues heard and addressed and resolved equitably and as peaceably as the authority’s response will elicit.
We demand not only less punitive food prices and guaranteed prices for the farmers’ produce so as to aid higher agricultural outputs. We demand not only decent and equitable wage and salary increases and improved conditions of work.
We also demand that Pensioners receive an affordable increase to their NIS Pensions receive an affordable increase to their NIS Pensions to $1595/month.
We demand too that the current 2/3 of final pay ceiling on Contributory Pension Plans be removed to provide a better enhancement of private pensions to the extent that the enormous surpluses in such plans will sustainably allow.
We also demand a more livable minimum wage of $14 per hour. The struggle has only just begun. Watch it now on our traffic jammed roads. Look out for each other. Let us love and be committed to Trinidad and Tobago.
Have a good evening.
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.