For second day, Trinmar workers refuse to work

FOR the second day in succession, operations at State-owned Trinmar (Marine Base) were virtually shut down as more than 800 workers — comprising administrative staff and contract, temporary, permanent and casual workers — showed up for work but did not carry out duties.

At the crux of the workers’ protests is a governance model aimed at merging operations of Trinmar with its parent company, Petrotrin. Between 8 am and 10 am yesterday, OWTU branch president Ancil Roget held meetings with Trinmar workers at the Marine Base and Trinmar’s head office. Roget told Newsday, he enlightened the workers about the negative aspects and consequences of the proposed merger. “Petrotrin right now is beset with a number of problems, including industrial and human resource problems, and continues to operate under a very archaic and bureaucratic system, which makes it cumbersome to carry out day-to-day operations,” Roget said.

With this in mind, he added, there was the real fear that with the merger between Petrotrin and Trinmar, the problems encountered by Petrotrin would be placed squarely on the shoulders of Trinmar’s management and its workers. Roget said the proposed merger would also threaten the workers’ job security. “Petrotrin really is a merger of three companies namely Trintoc, Trintopec and Texaco. Each of these companies has their own problems and to throw Trinmar into this mix will further compromise Trinmar’s ability and even Petrotrin’s ability to survive and/or succeed,” Roget said.

Another bone of contention by Trinmar workers, Roget pointed out, was that while the union had originally proposed a 25 percent “across-the board” wage increase for all categories of workers, the proposal had been reduced to a 22 percent increase after the union conducted a series of bilateral talks with Company officials. A meeting between Petrotrin and OWTU officials to discuss the impasse has been tentatively planned for today. Efforts by Newsday to reach Petrotrin’s Executive Chairman Malcolm Jones for a comment proved futile.