A welcome end

The ten-week old strike by construction workers on the Atlantic LNG Train IV project at Pt Fortin which had threatened to derail Atlantic LNG and Trinidad and Tobago revenue projections has ended with the workers gaining up to 22 percent increases in wages and allowances. In addition, the workers are eligible to share in a $12.6 million on time/early completion bonus. The announcement of the end of the industrial dispute was made by Public Administration and Information Minister, Dr Lenny Saith, who had acted as conciliator to resolve the contention between the striking workers and main contractor for the project, Bechtel International.  Within minutes of Saith’s announcement, Ernest Thompson, lead representative of the striking workers, would tell media personnel:  “A great load has been lifted from off my shoulders.”

It was a load that had been shared not only by the workers and their families, but by the Government, Atlantic LNG, Bechtel and the sub contractors, as well as the Pt Fortin business community whose returns from the sales of goods and services had shown a disturbing downward trend over the past two and a half months of industrial action. Point Fortin, home to the new LNG plant, whose construction had been halted, had gone through rough times. The workers and their families, many of whom had existed on credit along, presumably, with the goodwill of friends, would have seen carefully husbanded savings eroded. In turn, their Parliamentary representative, Larry Achong, had been a casualty, figuratively speaking, of the industrial dispute.

Achong had resigned on principle from his Cabinet position of Minister of Labour, when it became clear that Prime Minister Patrick Manning was dragging his feet on the question of implementing a pre-election promise of a sectoral minimum wage. Friday’s concession by Bechtel, although it had been in the wider context of mutual concession, demonstrated that the workers’ demands, based largely both on their position as temporary workers and the anticipated exceptionally high revenues to Atlantic LNG, had been justified. In situations where jobs, some not unlike those performed by employees on the LNG project, are of a temporary nature, persons are paid more than permanent workers in similar jobs. There is precedent for United States construction companies, which had been contracted in 1941 to build the naval station at Chaguaramas and other bases during World War 11, paying Trinidad and Tobago workers considerably more for temporary jobs than they would have received elsewhere as permanent employees.

Additionally, several State Boards in the United States, as early as 1938, had adopted the principle of industrial variations under which rates of pay were fixed at 20 to 60 percent in excess of the minimum wage. Meanwhile, did Atlantic LNG insist on a prompt settlement of  the dispute to Bechtel following on Prime Minister Manning’s coded message on Wednesday that there would be no Atlantic LNG Train V, and that other companies would be involved in the next LNG project? Was Manning’s statement a veiled threat? Whatever may have been the Prime Minister’s intention, the country welcomes the end to the industrial attrition, which had it been further prolonged just may have done damage to this country’s image of social stability. In addition, we are glad it is all over, glad for the workers, their families, the Pt Fortin community and glad for the country as a whole.