By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 21, 2023
Two months ago, the Center on Law, Equality and Race (CLEAR) at Northeastern University School of Law invited me to comment on Dr Godfrey Vincent’s book, Rebels at the Gates: The OWTU in the Era of George Weekes. I accepted the invitation because of the importance of Weekes and the OWTU (the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union) in the labour and political life of the island. This event took place on Friday.
Continue reading Rebels at the Gates
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 03, 2019
In the early 1970s when Marxist economics was all the rage, several Caribbean graduate students attended to the classes of Jaroslav Vanek, an economist and professor at Cornell University. He was known worldwide for his research on labor-managed economies or what he called “participatory economies.” Yugoslavia’s President Tito (1843-1980) was in power and was following this approach to social and economic development.
Continue reading A Magnificent Breakthrough
By Raffique Shah
October 02, 2019
The outrage that erupted when Government announced its decision to name the Oilfields Workers Trade Union’s company, Patriotic Energies and Technologies Ltd, as the preferred bidder for the oil refinery at Pointe-a-Pierre (Guaracara Refining Co), you’d swear all Cabinet ministers and the OWTU’s president Ancel Roget and his entire executive are guilty of high treason, and deserve to be hauled into Woodford Square and shot to death with goat-pills.
Continue reading Why not the OWTU?
By Raffique Shah
April 16, 2017
Let it be clear that I am not joining any chorus of condemnation of OWTU president-general Ancel Rouget for his remark on bpTT’s decision to have its Angelin gas platform fabricated outside of Trinidad & Tobago, “Take your rig and go!” As a former unionist, I fully understand and accept sloganeering, bravado, and even outrageous statements as legitimate tools of the trade.
Continue reading A Challenge for Comrade Roget
By Raffique Shah
September 29, 2012
I WAS privileged to have known and spent some invaluable time with one of this country’s great thinkers, CLR James. He was in his winter years, mostly lying in bed, but his mind remained razor-sharp. A conversation with “Nello”, as he was fondly called, was worth several high-level lectures at any university, so I extracted the most I could from him during what would be his final sojourn in the land of his birth. Today, I remember him more for his wit than his wisdom.
Continue reading Tell me something good
By Raffique Shah
September 09, 2012
AS ironical and comical as it may seem, the one word that drives the fear of God into the average Trini, is “gas”.
Yes, you read right—gas! I know the more enlightened in the country might think that Shah finally flipped his lid…he gone off. After all, if anything, for the sake of country, we need more gas.
Continue reading God will not help the stupid
By Stephen Kangal
February 22, 2012
Once again the people of T&T were under siege and being held to ransom and exploited by unscrupulous unions such as OWTU and SWWTU – formerly Branch No.1 of the PNM. The former attempted to endanger the socio-economic success of the Carnival by giving notice of calling a strike to deprive us of petrol/diesel to begin on Carnival Saturday. The SWWTU did the same during the busy Xmas season by closing the port.
Continue reading OWTU Wanted To Spoil We Carnival
Life can be strange sometimes. Last Sunday, while searching through a memory stick, I bounced-up upon some photos of Bull. I had taken them during an interview done with him in 2008. His eyes were as clear and as bright as ever. Everybody talks about his trademark beard, but his eyes were bright. Monday evening, I am driving down the highway and Comrade Gerry calls. As we say in Trinidad in our understated way, he told me “Bull gone through…”
We all know Bull the fighter. But I want to share a reminisce starting with my knowledge of him as a little boy right through to knowing him as a fighter for workers in Trinidad and Tobago. As little children he was part of the community of elders, in the sense of adults. Pointe-a-Pierre residential consisted of Hill, the two lanes, Poui and Railway avenue and later on Plaisance Park. Beaumont Hill was 10 minutes walk from Plaisance Park. You had to pass the lanes/avenues to get there and Auckington was the main playing ground.
Continue reading On the death of Ramcharitar “Bull” Lalchan – OWTU stalwart