The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) has wel­comed and sup­port­ed the pro­posed amend­ments to the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act (RS­BA), say­ing the changes ad­vance a long-stand­ing work­ers’ agen­da.

The union said it wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to im­ple­ment­ing re­forms that it de­scribed as part of an agen­da de­vel­oped more than three years ago. Ac­cord­ing to the OW­TU, it and oth­er unions worked with the then op­po­si­tion, led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, to craft pro­pos­als aimed at ad­dress­ing ur­gent is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those re­lat­ed to the RS­BA.

The OW­TU said cen­tral to the amend­ments is the widen­ing of the de­f­i­n­i­tion of “re­dun­dan­cy” to in­clude cir­cum­stances aris­ing from in­sol­ven­cy and re­ceiver­ship, along with the re­place­ment of the mis­used con­cept of “sur­plus labour” with a more com­pre­hen­sive de­f­i­n­i­tion of re­dun­dan­cy. The union said these changes are crit­i­cal to pro­tect­ing work­ers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own, es­pe­cial­ly when com­pa­nies close, col­lapse or are placed un­der re­ceiver­ship.