PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – Last Tuesday, Trinidad Cement Limited (TCL) announced a rise in price on a standard 42.5 kilogramme bag of cement by 9.5 per cent. The company had warned last July that it would have to review its prices after a 90-day strike by the OWTU meant to shift the company’s position from a wage offer of 6.5 per cent. TCL has been managing weighty losses over the last three years with a loss in 2010 of just over $80 million, a loss in 2011 of more than $130 million. When the union called the strike, TCL had already declared itself insolvent and was working with creditors to restructure more than $1.8 billion in debt. The company’s unaudited after-tax loss for 2012 soared to $178 million for the nine-month period between January and September, a 26 per cent increase over the same financial period in 2011. In October, Labour Minister and retired OWTU president general Errol McLeod told Parliament during the budget debate that “The TCL strike was an error of great magnitude in Trinidad and Tobago.”
