Hilton warns of Sept 18 exit as lease agreement yet to be finalised

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

More than 300 work­ers at the Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre are fac­ing an un­cer­tain fu­ture af­ter Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Lim­it­ed warned it could stop op­er­at­ing the land­mark ho­tel on Sep­tem­ber 18 if a new agree­ment with State-owned Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (eTeCK) is not fi­nalised.

But eTecK in­sist­ed yes­ter­day that no de­ci­sion has been tak­en by ei­ther the com­pa­ny or the Gov­ern­ment to per­ma­nent­ly dis­con­tin­ue the ho­tel’s op­er­a­tions.

In a let­ter sent yes­ter­day to Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer, Hilton Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Olivi­er Mau­maire for­mal­ly no­ti­fied the union that the com­pa­ny’s lease ex­pires on Sep­tem­ber 18.

“With­out a re­place­ment agree­ment, Hilton will not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate the Ho­tel be­yond that date,” Mau­maire wrote.

Hilton said it has spent months ne­go­ti­at­ing with eTecK and the Gov­ern­ment in an ef­fort to se­cure a long-term arrange­ment and in­sist­ed dis­cus­sions had made “ex­cel­lent progress.” How­ev­er, it ac­knowl­edged no fi­nal agree­ment has been reached.

The com­pa­ny warned that fail­ure to con­clude ne­go­ti­a­tions would have im­me­di­ate con­se­quences for its work­force.

“With­out a fi­nal agree­ment with eTecK, Hilton will be un­able to op­er­ate the Ho­tel be­yond Sep­tem­ber 18, 2026. This means that Hilton will not be able to con­tin­ue em­ploy­ing the Ho­tel per­son­nel af­ter that date.”

Mau­maire ex­plained that un­der the lease, eTecK is re­quired to as­sume all em­ploy­ment oblig­a­tions once the agree­ment ex­pires.

“It is Hilton’s un­der­stand­ing that eTeCK will as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all Team Mem­bers’ em­ploy­ment and all re­lat­ed oblig­a­tions af­ter Sep­tem­ber 18.”

Even so, Hilton ad­mit­ted it has no cer­tain­ty over what eTecK in­tends to do.

“How­ev­er, we can­not say with cer­tain­ty what eTecK will do. If eTecK is un­able or un­will­ing to con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions of the Ho­tel fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the Lease, then the Ho­tel may close fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the Lease on Sep­tem­ber 18.”

The let­ter al­so ad­vised that if ne­go­ti­a­tions fail, eTecK would be ex­pect­ed to com­mu­ni­cate di­rect­ly with em­ploy­ees and the union re­gard­ing tran­si­tion arrange­ments and fu­ture em­ploy­ment mat­ters.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, eTecK said ne­go­ti­a­tions with Hilton re­main ac­tive.

It said the ne­go­ti­a­tions re­late to a trans­ac­tion in­her­it­ed by the cur­rent board and man­age­ment af­ter the orig­i­nal lease arrange­ment ex­pired in 2023.

eTecK al­so stressed that Hilton re­mains the em­ploy­er of the ho­tel’s work­ers.

“For clar­i­ty, all per­sons em­ployed at the Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre are em­ploy­ees of Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Lim­it­ed and not eTecK. Hilton there­fore re­mains re­spon­si­ble for ful­fill­ing its cur­rent em­ploy­ment oblig­a­tions.”

The State com­pa­ny al­so sought to re­as­sure em­ploy­ees and the pub­lic that the ho­tel’s fu­ture has not yet been de­cid­ed.

“Ne­go­ti­a­tions re­main ac­tive and con­struc­tive, and no de­ci­sion has been tak­en by eTecK or the Gov­ern­ment to per­ma­nent­ly dis­con­tin­ue the op­er­a­tion of the Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.”

The CWU re­spond­ed swift­ly, say­ing Hilton’s let­ter had gen­er­at­ed wide­spread con­cern among em­ploy­ees who have spent years, and in many cas­es decades, work­ing at the ho­tel.

In a re­sponse shared with Guardian Me­dia, Ogeer said the un­cer­tain­ty had cre­at­ed “con­sid­er­able anx­i­ety” among work­ers.

“Work­ers are en­ti­tled to cer­tain­ty, trans­paren­cy and com­pli­ance with the law rather than spec­u­la­tion re­gard­ing their fu­ture,” she said.

The union ques­tioned whether Hilton’s cor­re­spon­dence meets the le­gal re­quire­ments of the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act.

“The Union’s pre­lim­i­nary po­si­tion is that the let­ter does not sat­is­fy the statu­to­ry re­quire­ments of a re­trench­ment no­tice.

“The Com­pa­ny there­fore has not iden­ti­fied whether re­trench­ment will in fact oc­cur, no con­sul­ta­tion process ap­pears to have com­menced pri­or to the is­suance of the no­tice and em­ploy­ees have not been in­formed of mea­sures be­ing ex­plored to avoid re­trench­ment or min­imise its ef­fects.”

The union al­so chal­lenged Hilton’s po­si­tion that eTecK would as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for em­ploy­ees af­ter Sep­tem­ber 18.

It is seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether there will be a trans­fer of the un­der­tak­ing, whether con­ti­nu­ity of em­ploy­ment will be pre­served, whether em­ploy­ees will re­tain their years of ser­vice and ac­crued ben­e­fits, whether col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights will con­tin­ue un­in­ter­rupt­ed and whether eTecK has legal­ly ac­cept­ed those oblig­a­tions.

“With­out an­swers to these ques­tions, em­ploy­ees re­main in an un­ac­cept­able state of un­cer­tain­ty,” Ogeer said.

The union al­so cau­tioned that the es­ti­mat­ed sev­er­ance cal­cu­la­tions at­tached to Hilton’s let­ter should not be in­ter­pret­ed as an ac­cep­tance that sev­er­ance is ei­ther in­evitable or legal­ly payable.

Em­ploy­ees were al­so pro­vid­ed with in­di­vid­ual es­ti­mates of their sev­er­ance en­ti­tle­ment should that sit­u­a­tion arise. Mau­maire ac­knowl­edged the un­cer­tain­ty fac­ing staff, telling em­ploy­ees, “We un­der­stand how this un­cer­tain­ty can feel un­set­tling, and we re­main com­mit­ted to keep­ing you in­formed as we learn more.”

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, whose of­fice was copied on Hilton’s cor­re­spon­dence, de­clined to com­ment on the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Lim­it­ed runs their op­er­a­tions how they see fit. I can’t dic­tate their busi­ness op­er­a­tions,” she told Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp.

“I don’t wish to com­ment on on­go­ing busi­ness dis­cus­sions be­tween eTecK and Hilton. You can speak to the line min­is­ter for more in­for­ma­tion.”

Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein did not re­spond to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day but for­ward­ed a state­ment is­sued by eTecK.

Just two months ago, Ho­sein told Guardian Me­dia the Gov­ern­ment was ne­go­ti­at­ing with Hilton “in good faith” af­ter in­her­it­ing what he de­scribed as a prob­lem­at­ic re­la­tion­ship left by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions be­gan over what Hilton had de­scribed as de­layed es­sen­tial cap­i­tal works and mul­ti-hun­dred-thou­sand-dol­lar fa­cil­i­ty up­grades re­quired to meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.