HILTON JOBS SAFE

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer has sound­ed an alarm that 300 work­ers at Trinidad Hilton are like­ly to be dis­placed if the in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chise de­cides to leave the coun­try.

How­ev­er, in a swift counter yes­ter­day, Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein has de­nied there will be any im­pend­ing lay­offs, firm­ly re­ject­ing the union’s claims.

How­ev­er, he steered clear of an­swer­ing any ques­tion on the fu­ture of the 62-year-old ho­tel.

“I can tell you at this point in time that the arrange­ments we have made are not af­fect­ing the work­ers. So I want to put the work­ers’ part at ease ... that the work­ers are not af­fect­ed.”

Ho­sein was giv­en over­sight of the State-owned Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTeck), which owns the Trinidad Hilton and prop­er­ty on be­half of the State.

eTeck had pre­vi­ous­ly fall­en un­der the re­mit of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, led by Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to ne­go­ti­ate with Hilton in good faith to en­sure that we have a rea­son­able arrange­ment be­tween them, es­pe­cial­ly in terms of up­grades and in­fra­struc­ture works that has to be done at the ho­tel,” he said.

Ho­sein said the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion left the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Hilton in a “state of mess and flux” be­fore they demit­ted of­fice last April, “es­pe­cial­ly in terms of the in­fra­struc­tur­al works and up­grade to the par­tic­u­lar ho­tel...and al­so the leas­ing arrange­ment that is cur­rent­ly be­tween Hilton and eTeck.”

Un­der the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment, Ho­sein said they had “had to clean up the mess that they (PNM) left for us. The first thing we had to do was in fact ex­tend the leas­ing arrange­ment with the Hilton and eTeck in or­der to pre­serve the re­la­tion­ship be­tween both en­ti­ties and al­so to en­sure that the ho­tel’s op­er­a­tions did not shut down.”

Ho­sein said Hilton has man­aged to keep its doors open due to Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts.

“There are ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Hilton and eTeck that are ac­tive­ly on­go­ing. Cer­tain de­ci­sions have al­ready been made in terms of agree­ments and so on. There are a cou­ple of out­stand­ing mat­ters that I can­not tell you right now be­cause of the com­mer­cial im­pli­ca­tions in­volved.”

In March, the Port-of-Spain based ho­tel had asked the Gov­ern­ment for a three-month ex­ten­sion to op­er­ate while both sides at­tempt­ed to reach a long-term agree­ment.

A fi­nal de­ci­sion on whether the ho­tel’s brand would re­main was an­tic­i­pat­ed by Ju­ly 16. This pe­ri­od has now been ex­tend­ed to Au­gust 16 with the ad­di­tion­al one- month ex­ten­sion.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day, Ogeer called on Trinidad Hilton and the Gov­ern­ment to come clean with its 300 work­ers, af­ter the ho­tel asked for an ad­di­tion­al one-month ex­ten­sion for the con­tin­ued use of its brand that same day.

Joined by 60 ho­tel work­ers at the me­dia con­fer­ence, Ogeer al­so called for trans­paren­cy and an­swers.

“If the ho­tel is to be closed, let the man­age­ment of the ho­tel know. Have a con­ver­sa­tion with them so they could have a con­ver­sa­tion with the union and we could do our due dili­gence to in­form these work­ers about their sev­er­ance ben­e­fits. We need trans­paren­cy, we need the truth. Work­ers can­not go on for one month again, liv­ing, pay­ing their bills, sus­tain­ing their fam­i­lies on ex­ten­sions.”

Ogeer said the union re­ceived an 11.31 am email from the ho­tel seek­ing the 30-day ex­ten­sion, cit­ing that they were still in talks with the Gov­ern­ment. The let­ter was emailed to the union by Hilton’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Oliv­er Mau­maire.

“They seem to know that, lis­ten, at the 16th of Au­gust, as the ex­ten­sion will now be, the ho­tel may well close down. And all we are say­ing is just let us know the tra­jec­to­ry of the thought so that we would be able to say, ok, that is the case and we would be able to pre­pare the work­ers and not have them in lim­bo. Some of these work­ers have as much as 40 years’ ser­vice with Hilton.”

In March, in­ter­na­tion­al hote­lier Trinidad Hilton was prepar­ing to with­draw its brand from the State-owned prop­er­ty af­ter the Gov­ern­ment failed to un­der­take ex­ten­sive cap­i­tal up­grades-es­ti­mat­ed to be over US$600,000-re­quired to main­tain the fa­cil­i­ty to in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­at­ing stan­dards ac­cord­ing to lease agree­ments, reg­is­tered records, pro­cure­ment doc­u­ments, union cor­re­spon­dence and in­dus­try analy­sis re­viewed by Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk.

The fol­low­ing month, Trinidad Hilton agreed to a three-month ex­ten­sion for the con­tin­ued use of its brand while dis­cus­sions on the ho­tel’s fu­ture with the Gov­ern­ment-owned en­ti­ty re­main on­go­ing.

On Wednes­day, Ogeer had ap­pealed to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar not to ig­nore the ho­tel work­ers.

“These signs are a clear mes­sage to the Prime Min­is­ter, as you are now fond­ly called the moth­er of the na­tion. Stop act­ing like the bad moth­er-in-law, be­cause we have good moth­er-in-laws. Work­ers at the Trinidad Hilton can­not con­tin­ue to pay their bills on ex­ten­sions and hope.”

Un­der for­mer CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al Clyde El­der, Ogeer said the union wrote sev­er­al let­ters to the then Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment about ren­o­va­tions at the ho­tel.

El­der now holds the po­si­tion as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s gov­ern­ment.

“This didn’t start now. What the Trinidad Hilton con­tin­ued to do then and now...is one sto­ry...one line..one an­them...we don’t know any­thing.”

Ogeer called on the PM to say where the mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed to ren­o­vate the ho­tel has gone.

“Be­cause we heard that monies were al­lo­cat­ed for this ren­o­va­tion,” Ogeer said.

She al­so asked if Gov­ern­ment is con­tem­plat­ing the cre­ation of a new op­er­at­ing en­ti­ty.

“We are al­so ask­ing ques­tions on prob­a­bly po­ten­tial sale or lease arrange­ments. Is the Gov­ern­ment seek­ing a buy­er? Has a val­u­a­tion on the ho­tel been com­plet­ed and what is the cur­rent val­ue of the as­set? Will a prospec­tive buy­er now be ob­lig­at­ed to re­tain ex­ist­ing em­ploy­ees?”