$66.1M settlement for PowerGen workers

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 Pow­er­Gen work­ers will re­ceive long-over­due salary pay­ments be­fore Christ­mas, fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of ne­go­ti­a­tions on a his­toric $66.1 mil­lion wage set­tle­ment.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath made the an­nounce­ment in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing the set­tle­ment as good news for work­ers.

Re­fer­ring to plac­ards dis­played dur­ing a re­cent trade union march, Padarath said he had seen one that read: “Work­ers are on 2013 salaries in 2026.”

“Bit by bit, we’re fix­ing it,” he said.

Padarath said Pow­er­Gen and the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) reached the agree­ment af­ter in­ten­sive bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions on out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for the 2016-2017 and 2018-2020 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods, which re­mained un­re­solved un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The agree­ment pro­vides for a cu­mu­la­tive wage in­crease of nine per cent over five years,” he said.

“The in­creas­es are struc­tured at 0.5 per cent, three per cent, one per cent, 1.5 per cent and three per cent, with all out­stand­ing pay­ments to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 el­i­gi­ble OW­TU work­ers sched­uled to be made by De­cem­ber 15, 2026.”

Padarath said the set­tle­ment would put more mon­ey in­to work­ers’ pock­ets for the Christ­mas sea­son.

“This means more work­ers will be go­ing home with mon­ey in their pock­ets un­der a Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion for Christ­mas 2026,” he said, not­ing that the set­tle­ment amounts to $66.1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for work­ers who had wait­ed “far too long” for res­o­lu­tion.

He added that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pub­licly chal­lenged trade union lead­ers to place the in­ter­ests of their mem­bers ahead of pol­i­tics.

“This set­tle­ment is a pow­er­ful demon­stra­tion of that prin­ci­ple, where mean­ing­ful di­a­logue tri­umphs over po­lit­i­cal thug­gery. Work­ers de­serve re­sults, and this is what we’ve pro­vid­ed, again,” Padarath said.

He al­so wel­comed the fact that the mat­ter was re­solved through ne­go­ti­a­tions rather than lit­i­ga­tion.

“This agree­ment took the mat­ter out of the In­dus­tri­al Court and in­to the hands of the par­ties di­rect­ly af­fect­ed. This is a moral win for all, as the mat­ter was set­tled bi­lat­er­al­ly, in good faith, through dis­cus­sion and ne­go­ti­a­tion, and not through a court rul­ing,” he said.

Padarath al­so ad­dressed re­cent elec­tric­i­ty dis­rup­tions caused by un­planned gen­er­a­tor trips and is­sues at in­de­pen­dent pow­er-pro­duc­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

“I recog­nise the in­con­ve­nience caused to cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es and wish to as­sure the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that T&TEC is work­ing close­ly with TGU and oth­er pow­er pro­duc­ers to im­ple­ment mea­sures aimed at restor­ing gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty and sta­bil­is­ing the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply,” he said.

He at­trib­uted the prob­lems to in­ad­e­quate main­te­nance at sev­er­al pow­er gen­er­a­tion fa­cil­i­ties over the past nine and a half years.

“This has been as a re­sult of poor main­te­nance of sev­er­al pow­er-pro­duc­ing com­pa­nies over the last nine and a half years,” Padarath said.