An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Work­ers at Nestlé Trinidad and To­ba­go have been ad­vised to pre­pare for every pos­si­ble out­come, as un­cer­tain­ty con­tin­ues over the fu­ture of the com­pa­ny’s dairy and juices busi­ness.

The ad­vice came from Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) first vice-pres­i­dent Sati Ga­jad­har-In­niss af­ter she met with em­ploy­ees yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing Nestlé’s an­nounce­ment last week of a strate­gic re­view of its lo­cal op­er­a­tions.
Ga­jad­har-In­niss said work­ers re­main in the dark be­cause the com­pa­ny has shared very lit­tle in­for­ma­tion be­yond con­firm­ing it is re­view­ing the busi­ness.

“The Guardian’s news­pa­per ar­ti­cle ac­tu­al­ly would have re­vealed more in­for­ma­tion even than what they gave us, be­cause they were look­ing to do the dis­tri­b­u­tion and they were look­ing to hold on to the prod­ucts present in Trinidad and To­ba­go and they have not got a buy­er for the fac­to­ries yet,” she said.

She ex­plained that the union used yes­ter­day’s meet­ing to walk work­ers through dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties while await­ing an­oth­er meet­ing with Nestlé on Ju­ly 16.

“So we know very lit­tle. How­ev­er, we are set to meet on the 16th, so ba­si­cal­ly what I gave the work­ers was in­for­ma­tion as to worst-case sce­nario if it should go one way ver­sus if some­body should buy it and keep them on,” she added.

Nestlé an­nounced last week that it has be­gun a strate­gic re­view of its T&T op­er­a­tions as part of a wider glob­al re­struc­tur­ing. More than 200 work­ers are em­ployed at the com­pa­ny’s Val­sayn fa­cil­i­ty on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way.

Em­ploy­ees were told on Thurs­day that the com­pa­ny is ex­plor­ing sev­er­al op­tions for the dairy and juices busi­ness, in­clud­ing a pos­si­ble sale.

Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the com­pa­ny in­formed the union that it was look­ing at clos­ing the fac­to­ry, while ex­press­ing a pref­er­ence for a pur­chas­er to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing the busi­ness.

“They just in­formed us they were go­ing to close the fac­to­ry. How­ev­er, their pref­er­ence is to have some­body pur­chase the fac­to­ry and keep the em­ploy­ees. That is their first pref­er­ence and to be able to con­tin­ue pro­duc­ing their prod­ucts,” she stat­ed.

She not­ed that OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get had cau­tioned the com­pa­ny that any com­mit­ment by a buy­er to con­tin­ue man­u­fac­tur­ing Nestlé prod­ucts would re­quire legal­ly bind­ing arrange­ments be­fore any sale.

The union ex­ec­u­tive said Nestlé met with OW­TU last Thurs­day, the same day it in­formed em­ploy­ees and is­sued its pub­lic state­ment.

She al­so dis­closed that the union asked whether the com­pa­ny had in­formed the Gov­ern­ment of its plans.

“They said no, and we sug­gest­ed that they do a press re­lease and al­so the Min­is­ter of Trade Tourism and In­vest­ment in or­der to com­mu­ni­cate to them their in­ten­tions,” she re­called.

Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Pana­ma who ad­dressed em­ploy­ees did not meet with the union.

She main­tained that while the com­pa­ny has the right to man­age its busi­ness, it must com­ply with le­gal re­quire­ments gov­ern­ing con­sul­ta­tion with the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union.

“They have the right to man­age a busi­ness, how­ev­er, there’s a pro­to­col un­der the law, the prop­er no­ti­fi­ca­tion, di­a­logue is re­quired,” she re­marked.

She said any fu­ture le­gal ac­tion would de­pend on the com­pa­ny’s next steps, in­clud­ing whether a buy­er is found and what arrange­ments are made for em­ploy­ees un­der any trans­fer of own­er­ship.

Ga­jad­har-In­niss al­so point­ed to ex­am­ples else­where in the re­gion, not­ing that Nestlé pre­vi­ous­ly adopt­ed third-par­ty arrange­ments in Ja­maica and re­struc­tured op­er­a­tions in Ecuador, where labour is­sues emerged af­ter the tran­si­tion.

She said ques­tions al­so re­main over Nestlé’s free-zone ware­house op­er­a­tions, which were not dis­cussed dur­ing the ini­tial meet­ing with man­age­ment.

Un­til more in­for­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed, the union has en­cour­aged em­ploy­ees to en­sure their years of ser­vice are prop­er­ly doc­u­ment­ed and that their Na­tion­al In­sur­ance records are up to date.