It’s been a decade since the sud­den shut­down of the Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas, yet the hu­man cost of the clo­sure is still be­ing felt by for­mer em­ploy­ees.

Fam­i­lies re­main fi­nan­cial­ly strained, and many work­ers con­tin­ue to wait for the sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits that were promised. Pres­i­dent of the Steel­work­ers Union of T&T, Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, says the March 11, 2016, clo­sure of the Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas steel plant re­mains one of the most dev­as­tat­ing in­dus­tri­al col­laps­es in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, leav­ing hun­dreds of work­ers strug­gling a decade lat­er.

Speak­ing on the tenth an­niver­sary of the shut­down, Bai­ley de­scribed the man­ner in which the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny ex­it­ed T&T as “the great­est crime against work­ers in the his­to­ry of T&T.”