Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

More than 200 work­ers are fac­ing months of un­cer­tain­ty as Nestlé Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sale process moves in­to its next phase, with the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) re­veal­ing that an in­ter­na­tion­al firm in Switzer­land will over­see the trans­ac­tion while dairy farm­ers con­tin­ue to voice fears over the fu­ture of the lo­cal milk in­dus­try.

Speak­ing af­ter a meet­ing with com­pa­ny of­fi­cials on Thurs­day, OW­TU first vice pres­i­dent Sati Ga­jad­har-In­niss said work­ers were told the sale process is ex­pect­ed to take be­tween six and nine months as the com­pa­ny com­pletes an as­sess­ment of its as­sets be­fore invit­ing prospec­tive buy­ers.

“They’re now con­firm­ing their as­sets, and an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny in Switzer­land will be han­dling the sale. Any pre­ferred buy­ers or po­ten­tial buy­ers have to pass through them,” she said.

Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the union was in­formed that more than 200 em­ploy­ees are ex­pect­ed to be af­fect­ed, al­though man­age­ment was un­able to pro­vide a fi­nal head­count.

“We asked for the to­tal num­ber in­clu­sive of man­age­ment and all work­ers, but they weren’t able to give us that at this point. They com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing that in­for­ma­tion at our next meet­ing on Ju­ly 29 be­fore giv­ing us the bar­gain­ing unit fig­ures,” she said.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment comes as dairy farm­ers have al­so ex­pressed con­cern over the un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing Nestlé’s fu­ture.

In a re­cent Busi­ness Guardian re­port, farm­ers said they feared los­ing their largest buy­er, with some ques­tion­ing why they were ex­clud­ed from re­cent dis­cus­sions be­tween Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and Nestlé ex­ec­u­tives on pre­serv­ing jobs.

Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the union al­so sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on those dis­cus­sions.

She ac­knowl­edged work­ers re­main di­vid­ed over whether to stay with the com­pa­ny dur­ing the tran­si­tion.

“Some peo­ple are ask­ing if they should leave be­fore be­cause they don’t know how new buy­ers will treat them if they come in. There are mixed views.”

How­ev­er, the union is en­cour­ag­ing em­ploy­ees to re­main com­mit­ted while the process un­folds.

“Our po­si­tion is that once the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to op­er­ate, work­ers should con­tin­ue to per­form to the best of their abil­i­ty be­cause if pre­ferred buy­ers emerge, they may have the op­tion of pur­chas­ing the com­pa­ny with its ex­pe­ri­enced work­force.”

The OW­TU ex­pects to re­ceive fur­ther de­tails on the sale process, the to­tal work­force and oth­er out­stand­ing is­sues when it meets com­pa­ny of­fi­cials again on Ju­ly 29.