Refinery closure will decimate the economy

UPDATE:

Former IndustriALL Global Union director Jim Catterson has said the economy will experience a “downward spiral into poverty” should Petrotrin’s Pointe-a-Pierre refinery be shut down by government.

Addressing a media conference at the OWTU’s Paramount building headquarters, Circular road, San Fernando Monday, Catterson said there were “similarities” between the ongoing feud between government and union and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher confrontation with the British miners’ union in the mid 1980’s.

He said following the impasse, Britons had to pay more for imported coal.
Catterson said this may also occur in TT as Trinidad moves away from refining to the importation of fuel.
He also disputed the number of people who would be thrown onto the breadline following Petrotrin’s closure saying this will number in the “tens of thousands.”

“It’s a fact that every big industrial facility like this, every direct job, every person directly employed by that employer, there is three or four others in the community that depends on that employer.

“Unemployment, not in 3,500 or so, or 1,700, unemployment in then tens of thousands of people in the south, all of sudden they are not contributing g to the national economy through taxes, they are not contributing to the local economy through what they spend, a downward spiral into poverty is want will be the result of the closure of that refinery.

“The closure of that refinery will decimate this part of the country and ultimately it will decimate the economy of the country as a whole. I cannot see how this makes any economic sense whatsoever.”

IndustriALL Global Union represents more than 50 million working people in more than 140 countries, working across the supply chains in mining, energy and manufacturing sectors at the global level.P

ORIGINAL STORY:

Former IndustriALL Global Union director Jim Catterson says the economy will experience a “downward spiral into poverty” should Petrotrin’s Pointe-a-Pierre refinery be shut down by government.

Addressing a media conference at the OWTU’s Paramount building headquarters, Circular Road, San Fernando yesterday, Catterson said there were “similarities” between the ongoing feud between government and union and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher confrontation with the British miners’ union in the mid 1980’s.

He said following the impasse, Britons had to pay more for imported coal.

“The closure of that refinery will decimate this part of the country and ultimately it will decimate the economy of the country as a whole.”