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OWTU SPEAKS 2007-01-12

 

A reformatted and better production-quality ‘OWTU Speaks’ is presented today after an absence of about three weeks.

 

So, although a bit late in the new year, we extend greetings of solidarity and best wishes for a safer, more productive, peaceful and happy Trinidad and Tobago 2007.

 

Welcome to the OWTU Speaks.

 

The commentator went to Church last Sunday morning.  Yes! Trade Unionists too, go to Church to hear the word of the Lord – even the ideologically left leaning as I view my own philosophical inclinations.  I went to church for the baptism of my French born grand-son Noah and also to hear – as I do from time to time – the reconfirmation of the church and the scripture with the struggle for social justice, caring, ethical and equitable treatment of all in our national community.  The sermon identified the profound social conscience of the Priest and His church.

 

The young Father Matthew called for the community’s resistance to a major bank’s plans to open for regular banking services on a Saturday.  I identified immediately with the Priest’s call especially because ABM and ATM services are now widespread and popular, the Banking Industry services are not an essential service requiring round the clock operations in that sense, and more importantly, to require workers – particularly the women workers who populate the banking services workforce – to require them to work on a sixth day even with appropriate overtime pay rates – is to reduce further the limited time which they have for family, rest, recreational the expression of their potentials for cultural creativity.

 

Scotia Bank, we are certain, is not with any intention to recruit new and additional workers who would be rostered on such a basis as to allow for five days of work and two days for family, church, religion, rest, etc.  And it is certain that whatever Scotia does for profit will be emulated by the other banks.  We must therefore say No! to Scotia’s plans for Saturday banking. ‘Let us put people before profit as a fundamental in 2007.  And so it was:-  From the Social Conscience Preacher at Church on Sunday to the teenaged social Activist Princess at National Library on Monday.  All is not lost!  True, we have taken a beating – from bad governance, malfeasance and immorality in the conduct of our public affairs, to cricket, capitalist profiteering, high prices (even to die), murder, kidnapping , crime – both white and blue coloured but still – all is not lost!  Indeed, one sees hopelessness in our politicians – both those who think they are there to stay and others whom the politics apparently cannot do without.  But all is not lost yet! Thank God for Father Matthew and his call for people solidarity.  Thank God for Choc’late Allen and her conscious innocence.  What an adorably remarkable youth she is.  She epitomizes without doubt and not by chance either – ‘the essence of constructive parenting.’  Three cheers therefore for the parents – Mom, Dad and everyone else who helped in the parenting to produce this premium ‘Choc’late.’

 

The One Hundred Percent Crime Free Fast For Purity mounted by Choc’late Allen commanded the support of every well-meaning citizen of Trinidad and Tobago.  The mission of this slip of a young girl – still nearly a child – seemed a task abandoned by the adults whose responsibility it really should be.   If  Choc’late Allen’s principled  demonstration these past five days, has touched any heart and provoked any mind to action on the social issues which challenge our safety, Security, growth and development – then the child’s mission was realized and was successful.

 

Have a safe evening and a peaceful weekend, Trinidad and Tobago.   I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.

 

 

 

OWTU SPEAKS – 2007-01-15

 

 

Good evening and welcome to the OWTU speaks!

 

Trying to put in context, the issue of higher prices, super profits, company closures such as BWIA and LIAT and mergers and acquisitions on the one hand and stagnation and under-development on the other – yours truly thought it helpful to be refreshed by some long time ‘must read’ theoretical passages which have been gathering some dust on the shelf.  I retrieved the ‘Political Economy of Capitalism’.

 

At Chapter 6 we are advised and I quote – “The tendency for prices to rise is typical of capitalism, even if it is extremely uneven and fluctuates from time to time and from branch to branch.  A variety of circumstances affect the price level.  But monopoly domination, the artificial inflation of the prices for their goods, is the basic reason for the rise in the monopolies’ prices.  Monopoly prices preserve their basic nature even though they may stay on the same level or even drop in times of crises.  Monopoly prices always exceed the value and the prices of production of the relevant commodities.

 

Monopoly super profits do not necessarily depend on a rise in monopoly prices.  When production costs drop, monopoly super profits may rise, even if prices remain the same or even fall.  Nevertheless the formation of monopoly super profits in conditions of growing monopoly prices is typical of imperialism.

 

The monopolies use various methods to establish high monopoly prices.  The most widespread is the price fixing agreement system, when the firms dominant in a given branch agree to fix prices at a level, which other firms have to follow.  The monopolies then take steps to limit the supply of commodities, and go as far as to destroy commodity stocks.  They use every possible means to remove competitors.

 

Capitalist profit is a form in which capitalist ownership of the means of production finds its economic realization.  The development of capitalism changes the forms of capitalist ownership and gives rise to new forms.  As a result new forms of the economic realization of capitalist ownership emerge.  In the last century, when the domination of monopoly ownership was established, a qualitatively new form of capitalist profit emerged, monopoly super profit, which is a specific form of the monopolies’ economic resources.


 

 

 

 

When the private form of capitalist ownership was dominant, the profit of every capitalist inevitably gravitated towards the average profit.  An individual capitalist could make extra profits if he used some important technical improvement in production.  Super profit existed constantly on a social scale, but individual capitalists did not enjoy it regularly. In our time however, it is more usual for super profits to be made on a vast scale by monopoly enterprises.

 

Monopoly companies have immense resources and can use scientific and technological achievements on a much wider scale than small and medium capitalists.  It is a question not so much of the use of new technical achievements by the monopolies as of the concentration of these achievements in their hands.  Establishing control over research institutions, the monopolies help themselves to the results of the work of scientists and inventors.  Depending on the surplus profit to be gained out of new scientific and technological achievements, the monopolies decide whether or not to use them in production.  It should be emphasized that the main component of monopoly super profits is the extra surplus value obtained at monopoly enterprises as a result of the higher rate of exploitation of the resources – including labour – over which they exercise control”.  That’s it for this evening – the analysis will follow and we will see that even crime is a profitable of capitalism.

 

I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!


 

OWTU SPEAKS – 2007-01-19

 

 

Good evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks!

 

It is erroneous and a  blatant attempt by agent provocateurs to have the public think that the recent spate of power outages occasioned by the need for load shedding by T & T.E.C. are the result of industrial action by workers of Powergen.  We say that without doubt as to the facts and without fear of contradiction.  Recent power outages are the result of the obsolescence of Powergen’s plants and equipment and as a result, the many technical problems which question and challenge the Management’s maintenance systems and manpower deployment in its operations of the Company’s power stations.  We will not however detail all of those issues here as they may compromise the national interest in the instance of the challenges currently posed by Mirant’s offer of sale of its 39%  shareholding in Powergen. 

 

We venture to state though, and again with fear of contradiction, the foreign shareholders in Power got a steal of a deal in 1993 when the then political administration did a garage sale of T & T.E.C’s generation assets, and they are about to effect another steal of a deal in 2007 as they dispose of assets which are now depreciated beyond their economic life and again with the same administration in office with perhaps reduced control.  And this is what a national interest media should be discussing instead of the false impressions that are being propagated against the workers.  Without properly investigating anything affecting Powergen and its employees, one missing link, as he is better known, rambles all over the place on an early morning TV programme, exposing his already well-known dislike for workers and poor black, not withstanding his being an educated church rat and as black as half past midnight himself.

 

The OWTU will not take quietly the Powergen workers being used as scapegoats in this situation where clearly the national electricity grid cannot be satisfactorily supplied to meet the demand for power at this time with old and ailing machines and systems.  We have brought these preliminarily to the authorities and are awaiting their response.  Stay tuned and have a peaceful weekend.

 

I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks’


 

OWTU SPEAKS – 2007 01-22

 

Today’s Guardian Editorial is most instructive – it has hit the nail on the head except that the hammer could have hammer could have been of more appropriate weight.

 

Good evening and welcome to the OIWTU speaks!

 

It is true that there are deeper problems behind the power failure, and our local authorities may wish therefore to examine Powergen’s current situation – no pun intended – to investigate and shed light on all the issues which have the potential to debilitate the country’s plans for economic and industrial expansion.

 

There would be no lucid explanation for the recent power supply failures from either T & T. & T.E.C. or Power Gen unless Mirant lifts its gag and risks exposing its – 39% of the Company’s assets to serious compromise in investors’ interest in the acquisition of those shares. Mirant’s power and influence in the company go beyond its 39% share in the business – it exercises sole authority over Power Gen’s operations

 

The 1994 controversial deal which the then government caused to be arranged among SEI, AMOCO and T & T.E.C and which effected the privatization of the country’s electricity generation facilities, needs to be revisited.  No sooner than the 2 year moratorium on staffing levels having expired, Power Gen, claiming the absolute necessity for improvement in efficiency levels as it reason, effected the retrenchment of thirty-seven employees from its already small workforce, in the first instance.  The Company has maintained and indeed improved its profits in every succeeding year of its operations beginning in 1994.  Proper maintenance schedules and plant and equipment renewal and upgrade have however not fared so well.  Even machines need from time to time, the tonic of repair and renovation. Ten years after assuming control of Power Gen’s operations, SEI’s successor, Mirant, battled with debt and bankruptcy proceedings in the US which no doubt created the major contributory factor to the company’s failure and/or refusal to upgrade and improve its capacity and reliability of Power supply in its very profitable Trinidad operations.

 

Now, old mechanical equipment which have done their time will require the experienced hands which had come to know them if prolongation of their usefulness is to be achieved.  But many of the skilled and experienced hands are gone by way of lay-offs and normal retirement and those who remain are either fatigued by excessive overtime and/or frustrated by the shoddy work done by cheap and contractors who are used to subvert direct permanent meaningful employment at the Power Generation Company of Trinidad & Tobago Limited.  It is this same reduced direct-employed workforce which the company insists, must also man the added 211 megawatts of generation capacity to come stream at Point Lisas without addition to the existing workforce.


 

 

 

This new power was contracted by the government through T & T.E.C. at the end of 2005.  Power Gen’s hope is that it may operate plants without workers – permanent workers.  And both T & T.E.C. and Power Gen are with the perspective that because they enjoy the cover of Essential Service in the Law they may unilaterally and arbitrarily treat with their hum resource which ever way they want, when they want.

 

Power Gen’s failures with regard to the generation and supply of electric power may be found in its pursuit of greater and greater profits without regard to others’ interests.  All of the arrangements – from guaranteed natural gas supplies and guaranteed profits that Power Gen makes without commitment to ensuring increased plant capacity, reliability of supply and essential treatment of worker and other stakeholders.  The struggle continues!

 

Have a good evening and peaceful and productive week.

 

I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!


 

OWTU SPEAKS – 2007-01-26

 

 

Good evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks!

 

The arrest and detention of Inshan Ishmael and the hurried revocation of permission to use the Aranguez Savannah for a Rally on the eve of Mr. Ishmael’s previous call for a 2 day shut down of the country were at best politically immature and asinine and at worst – an exposure of the political directorate’s intolerance with dissent and the peoples’ right to protest.  If anything, the assinity of the administration’s precipitate action was a response which brought great attention to Ishmael and the eleventh hour support that his ‘shutdown’ call received.  However much the OWTU’s leadership would have repudiated the 2-day national shut-down call, we condemn unreservedly, the action which was perpetrated against Mr. Ishmael.  There could be not reasonable justification for the action taken against the crusader.  Indeed, the heavy hand which was use could only provoke more popular crusades.

 

One is beginning to see signs of a narrow visioned incumbent administration snatching defeat from the jaws of victory when the bell is rung sometime later this year.  There already exists the probability of that happening notwithstanding the divided opposition with one half blighted by its own malfeasance and corruption and the other – stalled in its

Approach to determining the new politics and getting it right.  One would hardly be surprised at an electorate voting out the incumbent for spite – not spite for the incumbent but because of the incumbent’s spite and arrogance explicitly aimed against those who dissent.

 

It happened in St Lucia only two months ago.  John Compton was retired and did nothing to win the St Lucia elections.  Kenny Anthony insulated himself with arrogance and the privileges of office and did everything to lose the elections.  And it can happen here! Indeed all of the objective conditions – except for the abundance of financial resources – exist for it to happen here.  The Trinidad & Tobago electorate and especially the youth and younger adult – are restless, becoming confused and fed-up.  Everything is getting out of hand and, like the old folks used to say – ‘since we became a republic every Tom, Dick, Harry and Indra get licence to do what they want.

 

Unit next week – take care, be peaceful and have a good one.


 

OWTU SPEAKS – 2007-01-29

 

The day when there was no violent crime, murder or carnage on our roads seem to becoming the exceptional lucky day in the otherwise wretched life of the national community.

 

Good evening and welcome to the OWTU speaks!

 

But for the senseless murders and carnage on our roads, the violence which has taken over our streets, the corporate negligence which continues to cause so many occupational accidents and injuries, the continuing spectre of corruption in high places and in the contract system in both the public and private sectors, and malfeasance being established as the new culture – but for these sins, nothing is abnormal about Trinidad & Tobago.  Yet – all of that notwithstanding, we must dismiss any foolish prattle by the clueless and hopeless in office that the barbarism and disorder which have become our daily fare are part of a global phenomenon.  Nonsense!  The abnormality in our local situation is the product of an absence of leadership, mismanagement, the abandonment of good principles and decency in the conduct of the country’s affairs – and this has been so for quite some time now.

 

Those of use who belonged to the old school when education was about enlightenment and living will have an internalized appreciation for the profundity of value over price.  Today, however, as we break into a trot to 2020 beyond which there seems no established vision, price is become predominant, value abandoned and education and learning no longer aligned to purposeful work and assisted by rationalization, but instead subjected to the haphazardness of guesswork in multiple choice conundrums.  On the basis of this alone, when our planners and policy framers gloat on the country having taken quantum leaps to 2020 – developed – nation status; on the contrary, we would have taken – as the present now demonstrates – so many steps back into the pre-colonial period of underdevelopment and conditions of jungle existence.  It we were to see the future in the present, we would recognize that we are on the precipitous slide to barbarism.

 

And as it seems. Near everybody is giving up on present political leadership’s ability – in and out of office – to arrest the situation, halt the morass and reverse the decline.  Many, at this eleventh hour and after a lifetime of denial, almost, are now trying to bring God to their rescue.  Bad news for them – I read somewhere that most people who seek God at the eleventh hour, usually die at 10.30.  But the madness must stop!  How many more must die before we reintroduce value to life?  When will the carnage be halted by motorists becoming more people friendly and less road hoggish?

 

Have a good evening.  Save Lives!  Accidents do not just happen, they are caused!

 

I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!