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18 September, 2006
Despite a compromised wage proposal by the union, ICEM affiliate Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) and Trinidad and Tobago’s state oil company, Petrotrin, are no closer to an agreement on a new three-year contract, dating from 2005 to 2008.
The two sides, however, with assistance from the Labour Ministry, continued intense negotiations through last week.
Some 1,500 OWTU members at the company’s lone refinery carried out another wave of industrial actions in the nine-month dispute, staging short work stoppages on 7 and 8 September. The action effectively shut production at the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery, and was the fourth such industrial action taken by OWTU members at the refinery since last March.
On 5 September, refinery workers marched on Petrotrin’s main offices in Pointe-a-Pierre. They were joined by many of the 3,500 other members employed at Petrotrin, who also await updated labour agreements.
In bargaining in early September, OWTU lowered its wage demands from 32% over three years, but Petrotrin has not moved upward from its 10% proposal. OWTU is attempting to negotiate fair and equitable settlements in five labour agreements, covering 5,000 workers.
The credit ratings agency Moody’s, meanwhile, has placed Petrotrin’s foreign currency issue rating under review for possible downgrade due to the labour dispute. The review will “assess the company’s operations and debt servicing capabilities in light of its current labour unrest and the highly uncertain dynamics of labour negotiations,” said Moody’s in a statement. Roughly a quarter of refined output from the former Texaco refinery at Pointe-a-Pierre is for domestic use, with the remainder exported to eastern Caribbean islands, South America, and the east coast of the US.