Dismissed Nutrien workers form group; seek legal advice over severance package

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Work­ers at Nu­trien who are chal­leng­ing the en­hanced sev­er­ance pack­age of­fered fol­low­ing the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to close its Trinidad ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions have be­gun or­gan­is­ing them­selves and seek­ing le­gal ad­vice.

Em­ploy­ees are ques­tion­ing whether the pack­age ac­cu­rate­ly re­flects the ben­e­fits they be­lieve they are en­ti­tled to un­der the com­pa­ny’s re­trench­ment pol­i­cy, with some ar­gu­ing that the of­fer falls well short of their ex­pec­ta­tions.

A work­er fa­mil­iar with the dis­cus­sions, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said em­ploy­ees were ex­plor­ing their le­gal op­tions, al­though fears of pos­si­ble reper­cus­sions had left some re­luc­tant to speak pub­licly.

Ac­cord­ing to the work­er, the ab­sence of a for­mal union has re­sult­ed in em­ploy­ees pur­su­ing dif­fer­ent av­enues, with some seek­ing in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice while oth­ers are con­sid­er­ing col­lec­tive ac­tion.

The move comes as work­ers face the prospect of los­ing their jobs af­ter Nu­trien an­nounced on Oc­to­ber 5 that it would in­def­i­nite­ly shut down its Trinidad ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas.

In a state­ment, Nu­trien said the de­ci­sion fol­lowed a re­view of strate­gic al­ter­na­tives and con­sul­ta­tions with stake­hold­ers. The com­pa­ny cit­ed on­go­ing nat­ur­al gas con­straints, un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing fu­ture sup­plies, and the im­pact of un­re­li­able and un­eco­nom­ic gas avail­abil­i­ty on the op­er­a­tion’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. The fa­cil­i­ty has been un­der a con­trolled shut­down since Oc­to­ber 2025.

Since the an­nounce­ment, work­ers have been grap­pling with un­cer­tain­ty over their fu­ture.

The em­ploy­ee al­leged that the en­hanced sev­er­ance pack­age be­ing of­fered is sub­stan­tial­ly low­er than what work­ers be­lieve they are en­ti­tled to re­ceive un­der the com­pa­ny’s re­trench­ment pol­i­cy.

Some work­ers, he said, con­tend that the pol­i­cy should take prece­dence over the min­i­mum ben­e­fits out­lined un­der na­tion­al re­trench­ment leg­is­la­tion. How­ev­er, that in­ter­pre­ta­tion has not been in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied, and any de­ter­mi­na­tion will de­pend on the rel­e­vant laws, the terms of the pol­i­cy and in­di­vid­ual em­ploy­ment con­tracts.

Be­yond sev­er­ance pay­ments, em­ploy­ees are al­so con­cerned about se­cur­ing al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the spe­cialised skills many have de­vel­oped over years in the en­er­gy and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors.

The work­er sug­gest­ed that ef­forts to re­solve the is­sue should in­clude con­ver­sa­tions about op­por­tu­ni­ties for af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees to be re­de­ployed or em­ployed else­where.

Nu­trien has said it ap­pre­ci­ates the con­tri­bu­tions of its Trinidad work­force and is com­mit­ted to man­ag­ing the tran­si­tion re­spon­si­bly and safe­ly. The com­pa­ny has not pub­licly dis­closed de­tails of the en­hanced sev­er­ance pack­age or the re­trench­ment pol­i­cy ref­er­enced by work­ers.