OWTU SPEAKS 2003-02-19
CRUDE OIL
The national cash register keeps ringing and the Minister of Finance should be a happy man, grinning his dimpled face all the way to the Central Bank. At last count, the European International benchmark crude oil Brent, was trading at $32.55 (US) per barrel and West Texas Intermediate, the one more relevant to us in this region, was at $37.05 (US) per barrel. That is good money – mucho de dinero. I think that there is a $2 - $4 discount on our local crude due to quality – so that puts us at $33 /$35 (US) per barrel. And that is mucho, mucho de dinero, especially with MOF’s i.e. Finance Minister’s budget of $22 per barrel. It is necessary to make the point that the $2-$4 discount to which I referred just now, does not apply to our East Coast crude which, in the converse fetches somewhere about $3 more than the WTI benchmarked because of the superior quality of that Trinidad and Tobago premium specimen. That is to say that our Galeota crude is at a current price of circa $40 (US) per barrel. Just imagine what we will earn if BHP’s 100,000 bpd were being produced now and transacted at $40 per barrel. And imagine too how positively all these would be impacting on Petrotrin today had there been an aggressive drilling and work over programme to find new oil and increase or at least arrest the decline of old oil over the past eighteen months to three years. Instead, Petrotrin was marking time on one spot, wringing its hands, playing political footsie and feeding the growth of little fiefdoms. It was the worst period of that company being over managed – to the obscene benefit of a few – and under led to the disadvantage of the wage earners and the country. In some areas, we continue to see the resultant effects of the mismanagement, corruption through contracts and lease arrangements and high level acts of sabotage of the past. And we hope that there is the will, the testicular fortitude to right these wrongs. But that is not my thrust this evening for I believe in the ability of the workers in Petrotrin’s Marine & Harbours Division, Refinery Maintenance, Garage, Drilling and Well Services and at Trinmar, to struggle in their own defense and that of the country’s interest. My thrust today is with the dividend that will accrue to the Exchequer due to high and rising Oil Prices. And we must know too that the Finance Minister’s coffers are serviced by both the upstream and downstream ends of the business at this time – he is getting butter on both sides of his slice of bread, so to speak. Product prices in our regional and international markets are also at appreciable highs. The going is good therefore for the Oil Industry, the energy sector generally – methanol included – and government revenues. It is hoped that we invest for tomorrow and apply reasonableness and equity among the many beneficiaries of the gains of today.
It is in that regard therefore that I call for the second time in a week, I call for the immediate implementation of the promised $1,000 per month to NIS Pensioners; the settlement of decent wages and general terms and conditions for NIB workers and the settlement of reasonable terms for the employees of TSTT.
Well, as for the Energy Sector workers, we suggest that the principle applied by the Salaries Review Commission for Ministers and Parliamentarians, will suffice. After all it is these workers who make other peoples pay realizable and affordable.
All we ask of Mr. Divider is ‘some equity’.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2003-02-17
CARICOM'S LEAP FORWARD
It is refreshing that the Caribbean Community, although still struggling to come to terms with the urgent and absolute need for an all embracing political and economic Union and identity,, has matured somewhat since Grenada, October 1983.
By any measure, Caricom has made an appreciable leap forward – from subservient mendacity on the 1983 bludgeoning of Grenada, to assertive support for diplomacy and opposition to military action and aggression by the US against Iraq. And one remembers immediately, lone independent and principled position taken by the Trinidad and Tobago Government and which we believe was partly influenced by the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union. Of course, this country and its then Prime Minister, George Chambers, were made to pay our principled stance against the invasion and military involvement by the Americans into Grenada. We paid a price for refusing to be anybody’s yard fowl – wild and cockling like the Dominican frizzly or the gender altered rooster a little closer south. We paid as most who have struggled – the powerless, the dependent and developing – for Justice, Fair Play, for Peace, Bread and Decency.
We have reason today to feel a little bit proud that Caribbean Governments have told Uncle Sam that we will no longer be subservient nephews and nieces and are therefore opposed to military action to disarm Iraq. And that no action should be pursued that could undermine the vital role of the United Nations in maintaining world peace. Now, this nay also be at a price today as Trinidad and Tobago stance on the Grenada crisis was at a price. Nobody would convince the OWTU that Texaco’s sabotage of Trinidad’s Oil producing and refining industry 1983-1985 was not linked to US State Department’s ordered punishment against us for being impudent on the Grenada crisis. Yes, it is well known that the State Department’s machinery for subversion, sabotage and turmoil extends to and is oiled by US businesses operating overseas. We hear news of the IMF breathing down the necks of the Barbadians once more and one can only speculate the chill of the cryogenic stares and anti-Trinidad and Tobago posture of the Multi-nationals engaged in the ALNG negotiations for a Train 4 extraction of this country’s God given resources.
They will bully us into compliance whether on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, WTO standards, World Bank and IMF Globalisation paradigms all of which they author and superintend. And we will be more easily bullied and forced into compliance against our own interest if we did not capture now and direct our interest in carving an all embracing Caribbean political and economic union and identity. Let the debate transcend our Caribbean leaders and reach the movement of Caribbean peoples.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2003-02-12
SALARIES REVIEW COMMISSION
As the Government accepts the recommendations of the Salaries Review Commission, it is advised that simultaneously, decisions be taken to increase NIS Pensions to the promised $1,000 per month and that the long suffering employees of the NIB should have their salaries and conditions of employment upgraded to decent levels too. These are not asking for too much and are certainly more affordable and would contain as much principle as that on which pay increases for ministers and parliamentarians are founded. It is high time that we ameliorate the difference between the strokes for some folks and those for other folks. All the moral grounds on which the Government would have accepted that the politicians and top public officials be remunerated could be removed if the small and largely unprotected in the society are denied some decency of treatment. Indeed, the retirees from public service and private enterprise have contributed to and have been promised a better NIS Pension. There should be no further delay in effecting the $1,000 which they have been promised. And as for the workers of the National Insurance Board, it is high time that they see the improvements in wages and terms of employment which former NIB Chairman Claude Musaib-Ali had promised some time back. These are the workers who keep the NIS system going smoothly yet they have to pound the pavement in hot sun to have their conditions reviewed. Not so for the lazy and otherwise employed MP who would once per fortnight spend a fort-five minutes or so spewing BS and other divisive excreta in the hallowed chamber of the House.
That same House which will, on this Friday coming covert to an Electoral College for the purpose of selecting the next President of the Republic. I wish that the House be looked upon as a College of Preceptors and that all of its members may be looked upon as respectable teachers whose decisions we will, by their virtue, accept and uphold. It is truly a pity that in such a small place like here, we could not have unanimity on the nomination and appointment of a President. It is because our minds are too small and our vision tunneled.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2003-02-07
PIARCO COMMISSION OF ENQUIRY
When they said that ‘Dog is man’s best friend,’ I am sure, that it was not meant that, that animal’s lair should be so expensive that it would take the bleeding of a ‘milch cow’ to finance its construction. But I guess that when the dog was so identified as man’s best friend, it was early days before its lying- place was called a kennel and before man got into the business of airport construction. And we know too that it was long before the coming into being of party politics and gorgers who carried the initials ‘UNC’ for Unconscionably and Naturally Crooked.
Imagine a kennel for two dogs – a bitch and a bull – estimated to cost $170,000 with a change order. And after it was insisted upon that the item be given out to tender, the accommodation for the malfeasant’s best friends was eventually constructed at the cost of $84,000. And that is not the OWTU’s discovery – it is not an item unearthed by my enquiry. It is the testimony of one who suggests, by her demeanour and generally straight forward and acceptable character that she is reliable if not all together unimpeachable. I respect with genuine new meaning – Ms. Jearlean John, former Minister of Transport. She is a brave woman – and with much substance, it seems. Her evidence before the Piarco Commission of Enquiry is very unlikely to be corroborated by her former fellow senior cabinet colleagues but she has some of them sleeplessly bothered – it is not difficult to see, - one has only to have a little iota of the art to read one’s mind’s construction in the face.
Just think of how many $84,000 houses for small poor families that could be built with the criminal excesses that were perpetrated on that Airport Project.
Consider how much needed capital injection may have been accessible perhaps to BWIA as the Caribbean’s preferred Carrier, operating from a world scale home base, if the Unconscionable and Naturally Crooked did not over-invoice, manipulate, corrupt and thief as much as is being revealed, and perhaps the 617 BWee jobs will be still secure today.
But it is time that this enquiry winds up or it rune the risk of an anti-climax. It should end after Ms. John’s testimony. The authorities should find enough to arrest, charge, fine and confine some of the worst perpetrators of corruption and criminal infraction against the country and its poor people particularly.
Time to start the next Enquiry – Either Inn Cogen, Desalcott, Postal Services or Soldado West will do.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2003-02-05
PIMPS AND THE POLITICAL PROSTITUTES
Fewer Americans want war than the number of Jews who control George Bush’s administration and who would like to throw all the Palestinians on the other side of Jordan. The issue is more than a matter off Sadam hiding weapons of mass destruction. Israel’s assumed insecurity in nearby neighbour, independent, anti-American and rich in oil and gas resources – circa 150 billion barrels of the good stuff – together is one issue. Another issue is America’s worsening internal economic situation, its thirst for cheap oil, its nervousness with an independent left leaning Hugo Chavez who is intend on breaking the wealthy elite’s stranglehold on economic and political power and thus using Venezuela’s rich oil resources to break the cycle of endemic poverty affecting 80% of that country’s population and of course there is Washington’s headache over the recent popular election of a socialist President Lula, in Brazil. That to the US state Department is a considerably major issue.
It is of no mean significance therefore that El Presidente Chavez frustrated and beat back the opposition forces, some of them opportunist trade union comrades, in the CIA backed two (2) month strike that almost crippled Venezuela. There are many strong pervading views that Trinidad’s stance in the Venezuelan crisis provoked attempts to our own destabilization here with opportunist politicians and their caddies only too willing to dance to anti-Trinidad and Tobago music. The UK Travel Advisory was not accidental and the US history of masterminding violence and uprising even in foreign democracies is not unfamiliar. I found George Alleyne’s opinion ‘TT, Chavez and UK advisory’ in today’s Newsday well researched, very instructive and well documented. This country’s detractors and their agents within would have us believe that crime and violence is a Trinidad phenomenon. Like the cities of sin and sanguinary antecedents and customs in the UK and Us were havens for sanctimonious interludes, they would have us believe. You think they will advise their big business interests and their global corporations to walk away from Trinidad and Tobago’s abundant natural gas and substantial oil resources because of an upsurge in crime? Not at all, not when it is so easy to iron out a gas deal to smelt more cheap steel, or to buy a politician for a few dollars ($) more to facilitate a cheaper cryogenic process and when the cold deal thaws the dollars ($) expand into £’s. but let me not go there as great as the temptation might be.
Its just that the hypocrites, the pimps and the political prostitutes have been hiding for too long behind the crime wave that they have contributed to and now opportunistically jump to Marshall each cry and each cause of the less fortunate and disadvantaged. And only today, one of the many frustrated and desperate ones whom I suspect will be in a March of sorts on Friday said that he has not been hearing me on the issues. Well, I told him he is perhaps listening to the misleaders only and therefore not hearing anything else. I informed him that I am engaged in intelligent discourse and constructive criticism and analysis – that I condemn the BWIA lay offs, the Carib Glass works lay offs, the Caroni Dismemberment Plan, the refusal by Trinidad Cement Limited and Petrotrin to teat their casual and temporary workers with decency and propriety – but that I will not obey and subscribe to any call made by any corruption – tainted politicians or their operatives, to engage in acts of civil disobedience the result of which will benefit the politics of those who are about self and up to no good. I am Trini to the bone and on that I will not compromise – not for anybody.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2003-02-03
A PLAN TO MAKE THE PLACE SEEMINGLY UNGOVERNABLE
Last Friday’s received mixed but popular responses the great majority of which were complimentary and supportive. I was prevailed upon to repeat the piece and I do so with a few amendments and important inclusions to reduce any incidence of monotony.
It seems to me that a clear picture is emerging. It is the orchestration of a Plan – B or perhaps C- in which enough people will become disenchanted, enraged, angry and pushed to the wall – each one of them, individual or group, with legitimate concerns but oblivious – most of them – of the scheme, to being drawn into the “ Plan to make the place seemingly ungovernable. And the authors and implementers of that Plan are a network that has been cultivated over the past five (5) years or so as a mechanism for power brokerage and thus the retention of political power. They had become almost formidable – they were everywhere in the multitiered structures of the state enterprises and other statal organizations. It was only their greed and their corruption that caused power to be wrested from them. They make every excuse and shamelessly defend the worst instance of political banditry, excesses and malfeasance to have been perpetrated against the national interest – just listen to the vexing comments made by their crass representatives on the now popular radio talk shows.
Reports of the existence of terrorist labs, the alienation of the sick and poor by the crisis in the health sector, a fast deteriorating industrial relations climate, the fierce opposition to the miniscule increase in the minimum wage simultaneous with the insensitive increase in the price of flour, the immediate post election Petrotrin Manpower Optimisation Plan in which 2,000 workers were earmarked for separation, BWIA’s sacking of 25% of its workforce, the earlier retrenchment of Drivers at TSTT and now, its refusal to negotiate a decent settlement with its workers – all of these, we assert, are well constructed elements of a Plan by Political operatives who are up to no good.
It is against the background of these that my expressed opinions were considered last Friday. The Public Utilities Minister’s handling of the Opposition’s questions in respect of Executive Remuneration at the Water & Sewerage Authority was atrocious if not very sadly nincompoop. First, he needed time to access the relevant information. Next, he needed more time to verify and assure the authenticity of the figures. And now, last Tuesday, it was water more than flour and a sheepish attempt to extricate the unholy from the double standards and continuing bad practices of the past.
Nobody but the rabid party back and the subliminally naïve would believe that the Board of Commissioners at WASA would have approved such ‘decent salary’ hikes for the Executive Management since March last year without reference to the line Minister and the Public Sector Negotiations Committee on which the said Minister is a member. We do not believe it – except if that Board of Commissioners represented the ‘Rogue Elephants’ of whom a former Prime Minister spoke during the worst incidences of corruption and malfeasance in the political governance of this country.
The obviously marked inexperience of the Minister is what would most likely be made the excuse, in subtle attempts to gloss over what was surely an agenda to execute different strokes for different folks. The stretched explanation given to the Senate and the country does not hold water. The Minister owes a better and more truthful explanation, or the Board of Governors ought to be called to book for not reporting to its line Minister and its refusal to refer decisions and/or recommendations on Terms and Conditions of Employment for Non-Unionised Staff and Contract officers to the Public Sector Negotiations Committee for Ministerial sanction. This must not be allowed to pass as ‘water under the bridge’ – no! Not just so! The matter is not solved by the Minister merely instructing that the relevant WASA personnel be reverted to their previous remuneration packages.
Every such person is now potentially disgruntled and with reason too. And their situation – each one of them – is aggravated, psychologically and otherwise, by recommendations immediately following, to substantially increase the Salaries of Government personnel – increases which one might argue are well deserved and necessary. It may well be argued too, that if the bunglers should get more pay, the Executive Management and Employees of WASA deserve better.
And if the TSTT workers have contributed to the many $m’s of profits that that Company has made and indeed, it’s workers who made those profits, then, they deserve and must have a better deal than the Board and Management of TSTT and the PSNC are offering. The length of the strokes between one set of folks and another is too disproportionate and must be ameliorated. The Government’s mishandling of the many issues before it, including a deteriorating industrial relations climate, will have a greater push than the political call to civil disobedience and organized disorder made by some political operatives who are up to no good. There is a particular Employers’ Advertisement on Radio that seeks, uncharacteristically to promote workers’ militancy. That group however, has never been and is not now supportive of the interests of workers and the unemployed. At the same time the Caroni (1975) issue is being plannassed and badly handled by all sides and particularly the government; at the same time, BWIA lands a con job retrenchment on 617 workers to save some dollars. But the most callous and asinine so far has been the statement by a fool that the Government saved money and profited by the Doctors’ action and the resultant crisis in Health. Do we count how many lives were lost and how many more were disrupted? One experiences such a headache and feeling of nausea – symptomatic of course – when people in position of great responsibility just keep putting their feet in their mouth or just generally play the donkey.
One also dreads the deleterious repercussions of this government performing so badly and engaging in such arrogance that the sins, corruption and general despicable behaviour of its immediate predecessor administration is obliterated and forgotten. It must not be allowed! But, this is the land of Bacchanal and acute, acute short sightedness. So, say
what, a very pleasant evening to all.