The Steel­work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SWUTT) is call­ing for ur­gent State in­ter­ven­tion af­ter 48 work­ers at Crys­tal Stream, a bot­tled wa­ter and bev­er­age com­pa­ny lo­cat­ed at the Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment Eteck Park in Ca­roni, were sent home with­out sev­er­ance fol­low­ing the sud­den clo­sure of the fa­cil­i­ty.

The com­pa­ny is ex­pect­ed to close its doors at the end of next month, which has trig­gered alarm with­in the labour move­ment, with union of­fi­cials warn­ing that the sit­u­a­tion bears strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to the 2016 Arcelor­Mit­tal shut­down, when hun­dreds of work­ers were left with­out ter­mi­nal ben­e­fits af­ter liq­ui­da­tion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side the com­pa­ny’s Ca­roni of­fice, union pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley said em­ploy­ees re­ceived ter­mi­na­tion let­ters on April 16th, just days af­ter Par­lia­ment sig­nalled move­ment on amend­ments to strength­en the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act.