Level heads, compromise

Minister of Labour, Jennifer Baptiste-Primus, will again today host conciliation talks following her attempt yesterday at which only the OWTU turned up. While the union has served Petrotrin notice of a three-month strike starting next Monday, we join all groups hoping this can be averted, and that both can inch towards a settlement somewhere between the zero percent offered by Petrotrin and the 10 percent sought by the OWTU. Meanwhile an anonymous Petrotrin source said the company can be run by a skeleton staff, if most of its 5,000 workers strike.

The task of Baptiste-Primus, herself a veteran trade unionist, will largely be to convey to each side the position of the other, and so work towards a compromise, failing which the matter will head to the Industrial Court.

It is highly regrettable that this matter has been allowed to drag on for so long, from one administration to another, still unsettled.

Does TT need a change to its Constitution and/or industrial relations legislation to mandate a timely settlement of wage-talks, such as a “Labour Ombudsman”? The National Tripartite Advisory Council would have a most welcome role in pushing along labour impasses such as the current.

We sympathise with any worker seeking a decent wage, but we also warn that the stalled economy - as marked by retrenchment in many sectors - cannot afford a strike in a near-essential service that could shut down the transportation grid.

Business organisations have urged restraint.

Making his case OWTU head, Ancel Roget, cast doubt on Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley’s, vow to put things in place in the event of a strike, by arguing that soldiers don’t know how to safely run a cat-cracker at Petrotrin’s Refinery.

The OWTU has expressed its anger at the zero percent offer from a company that has in the past lost hundreds of millions of dollars in bad investments such as the World Gas To Liquids (GTL) Plant and in the dubious South West Soldado Field Project. Petrotrin’s also lost millions as its costs ballooned in its failed Gas Optimisation Project (from US$350 million to US$1,435 million) and its new headquarters (from $75 million to $300 million).

This whole dismal picture would have been registered by ratings agency, Moody’s which downgraded Petrotrin’s creditworthiness last March, and warned of further downgrades. Moody’s said without major investments to boost efficiency, Petrotrin’s cash generation will be weak, even if world oil-prices recover.

While the Prime Minister on Wednesday said that Petrotrin is virtually now a “ward of the Ministry of Finance”, Moody’s had noted the reality of an oil/gas based economy that any Government help for Petrotrin will be weakened by the fact that its revenues come from the same source as Petrotrin’s.

Finance Minister, Colm Imbert, last September lamented that his energy revenues had fallen to $1.7 billion in fiscal 2016 from $20 billion in 2014. Likewise Petrotrin head, Prof Andrew Jupiter, recently said Petrotrin had to cut $1 billion from its operation expenses last year (made of $500 million in each of capital and recurrent expenditure), and expects to cut a further $3.2 billion in fiscal 2017.

TT’s oil production is in the doldrums as is the world-oil price, the only glimmer of hope being this year’s due start-up of the Juniper oil-field, even as American coal will re-emerge under President- elect Donald Trump.

With the likelihood of continued low public revenues, the Government is surely wary that an award to oil-workers will also be sought by workers in other sectors. All should recall the tale of the “Goose that laid the Golden Egg”, and beware of Petrotrin ever facing the same fate of Arcelor Mittal and the Caroni (1975) Limited.