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Tuesday's interim agreement at the Industrial Court to end the strike action against Atlantic LNG, which had effectively stopped the production, loading and export of liquefied natural gas by the company, means not only the resumption of business but the frustrating of plans to shut down the country. The action by tugboat operators, who had withheld their labour for several days as a tactic to prod Atlantic LNG into upgrading their wage levels, showed signs of triggering the worst industrial crisis in Trinidad and Tobago since the Industrial Stabilisation Act (ISA) No 8 of 1965 was assented to on March 20 of that year. The ISA was replaced by the current Industrial Relations Act seven years later.

The Atlantic LNG shutdown had been tacitly effected, ironically, by a relative handful of tugboat operators, whose services had been critical to the berthing and unberthing of, and escort duties with respect to the tankers which load liquefied natural gas at the company's terminal at Point Fortin. An Atlantic LNG spokesperson, while maintaining a public relations silence on what the action was costing the company and its workforce in lost earnings, nonetheless offered that the Trinidad and Tobago Government had lost an estimated US$2 million a day in needed revenue. The stated per diem figure would have worked out over a 12-month period in excess of TT$4.6 billion! In addition to the resumption of loading of liquefied natural gas, construction of Atlantic LNG's Train Four at Point Fortin, which had been halted since last week over demands for better wages, has been resumed as part of the interim agreement reached on Tuesday by the relevant parties.

Meanwhile, it is regrettable that the National Trade Union Centre (NATUC), with several of its member trade unions troubled by industrial disputes, rather than urge a productive meeting of minds between parties to the two industrial actions at Atlantic LNG, had instead opted at a meeting on Tuesday to threaten a shutdown of the country. It was a less than responsible approach. Presumably, they were hoping, and not without irony, to piggy back on the (then) industrial problems at Atlantic LNG, where the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union (OWTU) had been "seeking the interests of the workers," and at Petrotrin, at which the OWTU is engaged in negotiations for improved wage and working conditions for employees. The OWTU broke away from NATUC several years ago and is a prominent member of a rival umbrella trade union organisation.

NATUC would have been acting more responsibly, by bearing in mind the crucial fact that Trinidad and Tobago supplies 68 per cent of US liquefied natural gas needs. Any exacerbating of the industrial unrest could have provoked both a feeling of unease among importers, distributors and substantial users in the United States of our LNG, as well as a needless continuing down turn in Trinidad and Tobago's revenues. At a time when the country could have done with a statesmanlike approach by the National Trade Union Centre it was treated instead with ill-conceived and ill-timed "robber talk."