OWTU SPEAKS 2004-02-27
DECENT PAY FOR DECENT WORK
TO THE LNG TRAIN IV AND 56" GAS LINE CONSTRUCTION WORKERS
Whatever one might think about the intemperate language by some advocates of their demands, the construction workers on the LNG Train IV and the 56” Gas Line have very legitimate and reasonable demands for decent pay (2004 standards) and decent conditions of work for the decent work that they perform. The OWTU supports with out reservation, all of those legitimate and reasonable demands and hopes that the cabinet would have dealt with the necessary proposals earlier today.
That demands for decent pay has absolutely no relationship whatsoever with the National Minimum Wage of $8 per hour. It must be emphasized that these Energy sector construction workers are not all labourers and helpers. These constructions workers are Welders, Fabricators, Steel Benders, Masons, Riggers, Electricians, Cable Jointers, Carpenters, Instrument Fitters, Insulators, Mechanics, Millwrights, Crane Operators, Heavy Equipment Operators/ Drivers, Spray Painters and semi-skilled helpers and labourers among others.
These are skilled workers who build and install multi-million dollar plants that process billions of dollars worth of oil and gas products. The contractors who are engaged in these construction projects are paid extensively large sums of $us currency most of which are taken out of the country. It can be argued therefore that one beneficial way by which to deal with the issue of local content is by way of employment and decent pay.
All of the running dogs of anti-workers exploitation in the Employers Association including the spineless and cowardly proponent advertising in the dailies, must know that there is no reasonable comparison between these temporarily employed skilled workers and permanently employed examples sited the advertisements with all their add on for Pensions, Medical and other benefits.
We are certain that the foreign and local contractors engaged in these projects have committed in their contractual arrangements to pay their workers in accordance with current industrial standards. These standards are certainly above the $8.25 paid to the cleaner labour,$18.64 for the carpenter, Crane operator, Riggers, Steel Fixer and the $18.50 AND $23.00 paid to the welder and other skilled workers.
We are without doubt that the workers fair demands are more than affordable in the sums which are being expanded by the owners of the projects now being undertaken.
The pirates who take advantage take advantage of the fact that we have a high unemployment situation which assists the unfair exploitation of our human resources are no less guilty that those who illegitimately wish to lay claim to our Marine resources, fish, oil and gas.
We must resist them both.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-02-16
solidarity with the LNG contract workers
Protesting tract workers at the Atlantic LNG site deserve the support of all right thinking citizens of Trinidad & Tobago. Indeed, these workers have the fullest support and solidarity of the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union. And Labour Minister, Larry Achong must be complimented for his attempts at ameliorating the situation with his proposed minimum rate of $24 per hour but fair play and justice demand a rate of not less than $35 an hour. It is those workers themselves however, who by their unity and resolve, would determine their right to Union representation and fair and decent terms and conditions of employment on the Train IV LNG expansion project.
Unionization of migrant contract workers in an environment of high unemployment is made more difficult, if not altogether impossible, by the existing provisions of the IRA and its requirements for the Recognition and Certification of Unions. Those are the reasons that conditions today on the Train 4 construction are marginally different from those which existed on the Train 1 works in 1997. And, as long as those conditions exist and continue to be unconscionably exploited by BECHTEL INTERNATIONAL and the local contractors, there will be wild cat strikes and other forms of protest. These are natural responses to the unfair labour practices which workers suffer at the hands of super exploiters.
Since LNG Train 1, BECHTEL has not had to demobilize reducing significantly its costs of operations as it moved to Train 2, 3 and now 4. Half hearted debate and discussions on local content have really gone nowhere and the story will be the same after Train 5, 6 and 7 if workers continue to accept the half-a-loaf nonsense talk. The workers suggest that things must change now for the smooth uninterrupted execution of Train 4 and then, consequential improvements on the rail to Train 5 and a possible 6 and 7. They have our support! Imagine in 2004, workers being told by some expat or his local pompek, “sign here, take it or leave it. You are lucky that you are receiving more than the national minimum wage of $8.”
And then some consummate fool from among the employers’ federation talks about global competitiveness and efficiency. The idiot is himself efficient only at thieving and scheming.
Yet, there are the asinine and ignorant ones who condemn the workers’ protest action and blame the OWTU for somehow being responsible for it. Well, we do not owe any explanation to our miscreant detractors but we haven’t had a hand in the matter in these recent times. That notwithstanding, the Central Executive and General Council of the OWTU support and we in solidarity with the LNG contract workers for a decent energy construction sector wage and for the unfettered right to Trade Union representation by the Government such interim resolutions as have been proposed by the Minister of Labour to ameliorate the unfair treatment of those workers. And on a happier note, the OWTU is pleased to have been informed, even verbally, that the Board of the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission has agreed to the re-opening of the Trade School and Apprentice Training Programme. Our campaign is bearing fruit and this step forward by T&TEC will serve as an important catalyst in the transformation of our young people from school to industry. More such decisions need to be taken urgently by the captains of industry in both the public and private sectors. Our campaign is given impetus by the T&TEC decision and will continue.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-02-13
WILL THE CARIBBEAN SINGLE MARKET AND ECONOMY SUCCEED
The Caribbean Single Market & Economy (CSME) will not succeed on the shortsightedness and insularity that still permeates the politics and therefore economic relations in the mini states of the English speaking Caribbean. Indeed, the Caribbean is where we are today – which is nowhere because of the backward step taken by the Jamaicans and the “one from ten leaves nought” response by Trinidad and Tobago. It has always been at some very critical juncture of our development that some one or the other had flipped a spoke in the wheel. And in spite of the presence of dominant political luminaries such as the Manley and Bustamante, Williams and Capildes, Barrow and Adams, Burnham and Jagan, Marryshow, More all of them with serious Caribbean perspectives in spite of them we have hardly gone anywhere and are today still shooting at each other across the bows of the Nina, the Tinta and the Santa Maria like the Owen Sanchos and Patrick Ninos of the new wild west.
My grandson, Kofi’s small aquarium, measuring 24” *12”* 12” and containing two gold fish might well describe the economic space that two mini state leaders are bazoodee about as they sit on banana skins before the tumbling waves of the Washington dictated FTTAA.
Now, my grandson came and met the aquarium and the fish eh! He really does not know from whence they came but I assured him that they are his even as I feed and take care of them. And as Kofi’s fish grow and spawn more fish they will obviously have to be transferred to a larger aquarium or they will be starved of sufficient oxygen. Could it be that those whom we have as custodian leaders, entrust with our Caribbean affairs need to have a serious Caribbean perspective shaped by a world view, knocked into their brains? Are they too deep in their slumber or too inebriated to understand how incisively their insularity and pompousness are dividing our people and acting against our Caribbean interest? It will be to the next many decades of further relegation to the status of `drawers of water and hewers of wood` that we will be condemned as a Caribbean people, if we remain cloistered in our small island aquariums and not face the reality of the turbulent seas in which the big fish is king.
Messer Arthur and Manning must be oblivious to our history that part of it that was important by ordinary folk who then seeing our future in the present their presents.
Barbadian Clement Payne, Guyanese Tubal Uriah Butler and others of a prouder period of our West Indies history were making the call 1932 for West Indies Nationhood that how they called it but it was a call for and federation and independence. They were also talking about a West Indian we prefer to identify it Caribbean economic space in which Guyana’s land mass and Gold, Jamaica’s bauxite and coffee, Trinidad’s Oil sand Gas, St Lucia’s our Caribbean waters teeming with fish all of those combined to provide a formidable means to the secured development of our people. The call was repeated in 1947 at a succeeding conference of West Indian Nationalist labour leaders.
There call were made long much longer before our colonial master thought about political unity and economic integration in Western Europe and much longer before trade and economic blocks being considered in Americas.
Our ordinary folk and those labour and produce were for a long time better educated maybe not certified they were better educated they had a profound view about the world and peoples development and co-existence and they were smarter. The politics of division fuelled by international capital and the power of the north prevented the dream and vision of that era from becoming reality. The same are presented today in the oily and gaseous issues of boundaries within which fish would fly and be caught. No disrespect meant here but Mr. Arthur and Mr. Manning are no more than two oversized sardines in a small pond.
Thank God it’s Friday.
To all those who are about matters of the heart Happy Valentines tomorrow and to everybody else a Peaceful and Enjoyable weekend.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-02-09
SKILLS TRAINING PROGRAMMES
When the major Skill Training Programmes at Trintoc (Petrotrin) and T&TEC among others, were shut down, it seemed to be part of a new government thinking and policy initiative to shift the weight of Training and Development from the coffers of industry and government to the shallow pockets of the citizens who were least able to carry the burdens of structural adjustment of that period.
Rather than improve and expand on what we had already established as being among the industrial training programmers in the Americas and supported by the John Donaldson and San Fernando Technical Institutes, the government precipitated the closure of our Apprentice in preference for the little understood German Fashion Master Craftsman model. Of course, it never got off the grounds and will stay there because German requirement and system are not the same as we have and need here - a point which our policy makers and planners fail to comprehend. As much as we here in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean may wish to develop the multi-faceted talents of our local engineers or craftsman we must know that our local situation of unemployment and higher under employment precludes, from a socio-economic stand point, the need for a proliferation of multi-skilling of the individual. Germany on the other hand, has had to import to meet the requirements of its new industrial development programme and reconstruction after the 2nd World War.
We are suggesting therefore that the attempt in the very early 1990’s supplant our Training Schemes with the German Master Craftsman Programme was ill-found. And today we are reaping the whirlwind of the bad wind that the government had sewn then.
Just ponder the circumstances and facts for a moment:
In the Apprentice Training Programmes, the trainee was coached, instructed, guide in the disciplines of work and supervised both in the practice on the job and in the theory in the class room and he received a stipend which provided some necessary basic needs. Those programmes meant the world to many whose parents and guardians had no where else to turn. But very importantly they also meant the availability of the skills bank which the energy and heavy industry and local manufacturing sectors once possessed up the paradigm of VSEP and Retrenchment by Attrition.
And in came the Enterprise model of Training i.e. Training as a money making enterprise in itself. From the receipt of a stipend, trainees must now pay some $6,000 to $12,000 per year to the trainer for a miniscule level of guidance and absolutely no real hands-on exposure as was previously provided. Measure the loss for the many whose folks have been affected by VSEP and therefore cannot afford the expense. And as an adjunct to that piece of careful unplanning, the government sponsors and the employers operate a so-called on the Job (OJT) Training Programme for, in the great majority, young female school leavers. These OJT’s are made to occupy job positions forces vacant by voluntary separation and are in many reported cases exploited by leering leeches in some establishments, six months at a time but with no training, no real supervision and for a stipend of $200 per week.
Some bosses are known to have fought yes physically over particulars luscious looking OJT candidates. Not to mention the extent to which they are made to genuflect before some hoodlum priestly involved in the selection process. And you know what? Those OJT’s who graduate merely move to the status of temporary confidential secretary. Yuh think it soft!
We demand a return to serious education, training and human resource development. Reopen our Trade Schools and Apprentice Training Programmes and provide whatever the necessary tax and fiscal incentives for their expansion as an investment in 2020 developed nation status. Mr. Prime Minister we beg to move
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-02-06
SPECIALIST COMMITTEES
There is more, much more to be said on the issue of human resource development and meeting the demand for skilled technically trained workers to fit the demands of industrialization. In my discussion last day Wednesday, I alluded to programmes which had benefited industry and the country for many decades i.e. - the Student Technician and Apprentice Training Programmes. I propose to carry that discussion a little bit further today. In the New Governance and Development paradigm, there is a tendency to refer every important issue to some specialist committee. From road and drainage infrastructure, to developing a business enterprise out of the Pitch Lake, to piping gas to every new housing development to water distribution, to reorganizing and expanding the education system and dealing with school violence there are dozens of consultants, some of them mercenaries, lining up to bleed the public purse. In the area of Human Resource, Training and Organizational Development there are scores of Pseudo Human Resource specialists with whom the country’s 2020 conjunction is entrusted. It is with much trepidation that some of us envisage our status by the next half a score and six years. On the other hand, there are some simple and very practical solutions to what has grown perhaps. Into the complex problem of a shortage of skilled labour. Those solutions are so simple that they have apparently been overlooked for the consultants’ recommendation that we should open up for the free movement of capital and labour too - i.e. expatriate labour at all levels too. So that today for instance an important state enterprise is trapped in the conundrum of having award a $30 m (T.T.) contract for Test Inspection and Refurbishment of a refinery plant, and as we speak there is no certainly as to when that critical Plant will be put into operation the job having already gone into time over-run by eleven weeks and a cost over-run of $100 m and still counting. It is also well known that another very important state Enterprise is currently funding a programme of crash training for Welders to satisfy the labour requirements of the cross country piping for gas Transmission.
Had the authorities not shut down our then highly acclaimed training schemes in the early 1990’s to be exacerbated by the successive forced Voluntary Separation Plans that become a big business union-busting feature since then, we certainly will not be in the invidious circumstances that afflict quality work and high productivity levels at our major enterprises and new business ventures.
We had top of the line Training at three essential levels. The student Technician was generally the Secondary School Graduate who would have been channeled through an Engineering Technical Supervision programme on his way to higher level tertiary and management training and development.
The Craft Apprentice was generally the less academically inclined Secondary School dropout and Primary School but tending technical and Grade hands on occupations to become artisan extra – ordinaries such as the Welder, Mechanics, Electricians, Cable Jointers, Machinists, Turners, Fabricators, Pattern Makers, Coach Finishers, Steel Benders, Glassblowers, Fitters and other that we do not now have or that are in short supply.
And there was another level – The Stenographer Secretarial Administrative Trainee essentially female secondary school graduates who preferred industry over Nursing, Teaching and other soft occupations.
All of those programs had a relationship with school education industry and provided for government planning for the youth between education training industrial development adult occupation and therefore contribution to nation and society building.
I shall discuss the last stanza on this topic next Monday.
Let us all call for a reopening of our Apprentice Training Schemes at Petrotrin , T&TEC, and other major state Enterprises and demand that all of the MNC’s operating here invest in meaningful national human resource development.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-02-04
Poaching and Industrial Cannibalism
There is a report in the newspapers that LNG growth is slowed because of a shortage of skilled labour.
We contend that the shortage of skilled labour is not isolated to the construction and staffing of LNG Trains. All our major industrial and commercial enterprises have, over the past fifteen (15) years, been surviving on poaching and industrial cannibalism at garage sales prices. Nobody wants to spend on Training, Research and Development. Those who now engage money out of the facility of Training rather than having trained personnel to help advance the viability and success of our business enterprises. I am sure that the many who have been observing our growth and underdevelopment since the latter half of the 1980’s have already caught my drift.
Trinidad and Tobago was among the highest literacy rates in the western hemisphere. We had artisans and craftsman second to none. Our welders and heavy construction workers can point out their handiwork in major structures and facilities in the Caribbean and Americas.
Informed contribution to politics, industry, business and national development will recall some familiarity with the country’s 3rd five year Development Programmed 1969-73 thanks to William, Dumas, Alleyne, Rampersad, Lewis and other folks with a clear vision then and a Trinidad and Tobago and Caribbean perspective. A most important part of that Development Programme dealt with advancing the technical professional and administrative capabilities of our people, building social infrastructure and an enabling frame work and environment to give meaning to our political independent as we set about carving out an economic independence.
Among the many policy objectives informed by that plan was the important principle that nationals must have first considerations and preference to the top professional, technical and administrative positions offered by the big foreign business setting up shop here. And where we had no qualified and available national, a programme of training and understudy development was affected. Today, the story is a completely different one and the picture is changed. The picture changed. The platform for development is a compendium of clichés stamped with the 2020 logo.
There are on our offshore installations and onshore facilities barely literate glorified mechanics coming here as Engineers, Drillers Electricians, Welders and the like. They make hitches of 28 days on, are paid in US$ while eligible nationals are left idle or appointed to the more menial and less challenging occupations. At another level, among the majors who are now entrenching themselves here, we are allowed only token national representation in their managements. These same companies if they are to operate say in Egypt must provide eleven positions to nationals for every one foreigner that is appointed.
It seems to me that we have to go back to some basics, identifying those programmes and perspectives which worked for the future. We need to reassess and begin to see our future in the presents. The situation today demands a reopening our student Technician and Apprentice Training Programmes as have previously benefited us at Petrotrin, T&TEC, Neal &Massey and other major business houses. These programmes will also see a restructuring and revitalization of our Technical Institutes and Vocational Schools. Let us wait till 2020 to turnaround from producing trained and professional bandits to providing skilled and technically developed contributors to our social and economic building process.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-02-02
Trade issues and the FTAA
The relevant authorities here concentrate all of their efforts on having the Secretariat of the FTAA sited in Port of Spain. It seems that nothing else is important to them all of the essential trade issues and protocol arrangements are either unknown by country’s representatives or are guarded as secrets from a blissfully ignorant Trinidad and Tobago public.
Today we help to disseminate a small piece which we read in the Economist edition titled ‘The World in 2004.’ The piece is written by one Michael Reid, on economist who predicts ‘A sorry climax is in store for the grand idea of free trade in the Americas.
He says ‘free trade from Toronto to Tierra del Fuego: the grand idea is supposed to come to fruition in 2004. Yet the chances are that ten years of talks about a Free – Trade Area of the Americans (FTAA) will culminate in December 2004 in a motley handful of bilateral trade deals US dictated,( my emphasis), ranging from the unhelpful to the unambitious. Blame that partly on the talks, Brazil and the United States, but above all on rising protectionism and the hold ups in the Doha round of world –trade talks. Brazil has long wanted the United States to dismantle its farm subsidies, its ad hoc barriers to farm trade and its aggressive use of anti-dumping duties. The Americans want Brazil to open up services and government procurement to international competition. That clash had been finessed by both sides agreeing to shunt these issues into the Doha round, originally due to finish at the same time as the FTAA but now likely to drift on and on. That delay will make agreement hard when the trade ministers from 34 countries in the Americas meet in Brazil for their final horse-trading session perhaps in November this year.
Both sides have been working on the alternative strategies. The United States hopes to have wrapped up a free trade agreement with five small Central American countries during early talks to Colombia and perhaps Peru and the Caricom group of Caribbean countries in 2004 if the FTAA talks go badly.
Brazil has a harder hand to play. It has tried to line up a United South American block in favor of on ‘FTAA life.’ restricted to issues of market access and tariff-cutting. But Argentina and Uruguay, two of Brazil’s partners in Mercosur (South America’s would be common market which also includes Paraguay) may prefer a wider agreement. The European Union will be watching closely: in separate talks with Mercosur, it is likely to match any such tariff concessions. Whatever emerges from this whole unedifying process is likely to have more to do with genuine free trade.
Those were Michael Reid’s expressions which we thought we share in our own attempts to inform, educate and mobilize in our Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago worker’s and people interests.
We insist that a North American dictated Free Trade Agreement as is currently offered will not benefit the interests of the people, industry agriculture and commerce of Trinidad and Tobago the Caribbean and Latin America including Cuba. That USA dominated arrangement is likely to have more to do with hegemonic control and discrimination commercial preferences than with genuine free trade.