Oil stalemate

“All we can say is what they said and they said that as recently as when we were coming up here for this meeting, he requested more information from them with respect to different costing levels.” However, Roget said both sides agreed to further conciliation and will meet again at 1.30 pm tomorrow at the Industrial Court.

He said that meeting will give the Minister of Finance the chance to put “some sort of proposal” to the union. Roget said the union had also agreed to a meeting next Tuesday in the event the matter is not resolved by then and also had a meeting with the Minister of Labour today and “our preference for that is that she comes accompanied by a high-powered team from the Government and discuss in its entirety this whole issue putting on the table some kind of a proposal but thus far, I want to repeat the point, the Government is remaining silent. We have not had any proposal from the Government – is only zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero and we can’t take that.” He said through all these meetings the union “is communicating to everybody that we are using every available effort and using every available opportunity to try to bring resolution to this issue.” Still, he reminded the country that the union has served strike notice and the clock is ticking and over the next 96 hours plus another 24 hours the workers will be walking off their various work stations, withdrawing their labour legally for the next three months if that becomes necessary.

He said this was not what the union wanted to happen but the public and everybody must understand that this is an issue of respect for the oil worker. He said the oil worker has not had a wage increase, a settlement or even an offer for periods that other people got. “Everybody else got but the oil worker didn’t get and zero, zero, zero and another zero, zero zero and nobody is talking to us to determine how they are going to deal with this outstanding payment, that is disrespectful.” And the other part of that is that we are saying clearly that we are not demanding all this big set of money in backpay. “We are saying that for the period in which everybody else got, let us apply an increase and quantify the debt and over an extended period of time the company can discharge this debt, but don’t for heaven’s sake don’t disregard us and don’t disrespect us by not having the conversation. In the conversation once we sit down and examine different proposals and so on we will be able to arrive at a settlement, but thus far, the Government has been very silent and the company who was talking with us, they say they don’t have authority. So could you imagine that, if they say they don’t have authority and the Government has authority but the Government is not talking with them.”