Over half of Trinidad’s Unilever’s unionised workers being retrenched

By Stabroek News On In Trinidad & Tobago News |
Unilever workers protest outside the company’s compound Champ Fleurs in August this year.
Unilever workers protest outside the company’s compound Champ Fleurs in August this year.

(Trinidad Guardian) The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) has been no­ti­fied that 178 out of the to­tal unionised work­force of 286 work­ers at Unilever Caribbean Ltd (UCL) work­ers are be­ing sent home.

OW­TU branch rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Neil Mc Each­nie told Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed via a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day that the com­pa­ny “went ahead and is­sued re­trench­ment no­tices for 178 work­ers. Unilever’s man­age­ment is in the process of is­su­ing re­trench­ment no­tices un­til about 7 pm tonight when the last em­ploy­ee se­lect­ed is sched­uled to re­ceive their pack­age.”

A me­dia re­lease from UCL yes­ter­day said: “The com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to pri­ori­tise the safe­ty of all per­son­nel and will ac­tive­ly pur­sue the well­be­ing of the peo­ple and the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny. UCL will abide by and op­er­ate in ac­cor­dance with all le­gal oblig­a­tions in all mat­ters re­lat­ing to this de­ci­sion.”

UCL said it will sharp­en the fo­cus of its core busi­ness to en­sure the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of its op­er­a­tions in T&T and the re­gion.

Mc Each­nie ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that so many work­ers are be­ing sent home es­pe­cial­ly around the Christ­mas sea­son.

“How does one feel if they are be­ing sent home? Es­pe­cial­ly some work­ers who have worked with the com­pa­ny in ex­cess of 20 years par­tic­u­lar­ly this time of the year? There is a mix of frus­tra­tion, anger and anx­i­ety and all those types of emo­tions that will at­tend to this type of sit­u­a­tion,” he told the Guardian yes­ter­day.

Mc Each­nie al­so ex­pressed scep­ti­cism that Unilever’s man­age­ment is abid­ing by due process.

“I have not been se­lect­ed for re­trench­ment at this time but hav­ing been very in­ti­mate­ly in the process I can say em­phat­i­cal­ly that noth­ing that re­sem­bles good faith hap­pened in these dis­cus­sions. It start­ed with a lie and end­ed with a lie. It was shroud­ed in de­cep­tion, de­ceit and out­right lies through­out the en­tire process. There is no ex­pec­ta­tion from the com­pa­ny that they will dis­con­nect them­selves from that type of be­hav­iour,” he said.