00:00Former trade unionists now serving in government led the charge in support of the Heritage Petroleum Bill as debate continued
00:07in the House of Representatives.
00:09Labor Minister Leroy Batiste rejected criticism surrounding the timing of the legislation.
00:15The debate on this bill today is not a ploy in any way to pacify the labor movement on the
00:25eve of Labor Day or to give them something to gallery about tomorrow, as one of the members in the
00:32Senate from the other side alluded to yesterday.
00:38Madam Deputy Speaker, let me make it abundantly clear. This debate is not some token gesture on the eve of
00:48Labor Day.
00:49The bill established Heritage Petroleum and Power of Fuel Trading to be the successors to Petro Trin.
00:56Madam Deputy Speaker, this bill is simply meant to correct a grave injustice that has been unattended to since 2018.
01:11This omission was no accident. It was a calculated move by the PNM, a party that has consistently treated workers
01:21as expendable.
01:22It allows for the continuation of collective agreements established under Petro Trin and therefore permits the OWTU to retain bargaining
01:32rights.
01:33Inconsistent with the Act in 1993, the Petro Trin Investing Act, where that was already catered for,
01:40it indicated from the get-go that that previous administration wanted to destroy the OWTU at the heart by taking
01:50out some 5,000 members of the union.
01:54Keza, former vice president of the OWTU, later tuned his attention to the opposition's position on the legislation.
02:01You abstain from supporting this bill in the Senate. You abstain. And I imagine you might do the same thing
02:12again today. Yes?
02:15Yeah, the order might say no. Right? And you know why?
02:23Because, Madam Deputy Speaker, they knew what they did. The attempt was to win the most successful trade union in
02:33Trinidad and Tobago, the OWTU.
02:36Liberate MP Clyde Elder joined the debate linking the bill to the wider political battle that surrounded Petro Trin's closure
02:43and its aftermath.
02:44Minister Keza, member for Point 14, told us about the attack on the OWTU and the historical, deliberate attack on
02:55the OWTU.
02:57But when you marry that now, that hatred they had for the OWTU, with a more acute and poignant hatred
03:08for the president general of the OWTU,
03:12you get what happened in Petro Trin. That's what they get.
03:15Because Petro Trin wasn't just about, Marshall Petro Trin wasn't just about destroying the union, no, no.
03:21It was an attempt to destroy the integrity and the character of Ansel Rouget.
03:26Debate on the bill continued into the afternoon.
03:29The legislation has already cleared the Senate and is expected to receive final approval in the lower house.
03:35Urgashi Tawari, Ruparain, TV6 News.
03:40Is that in fact that when I was in the office Minneapolis and thecharacter cutels that I asked,
03:41they were given to be the backup, we registered for him a while to attack on the
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