THE National Workers Union (NWU) has called for a meeting with Caribbean Cement Company to discuss the plant’s lagging production capacity against market demand and the implications for its workers.

“This is so because we are well aware of the implications of any cement importation on levels of production and sales at the plant,” Danny Roberts, NWU deputy island supervisor, said in a letter to Carib Cement head, Anthony Haynes.

“Perhaps even of greater concern to us are the implications for job security, wage negotiations and general employee satisfaction and motivation,” Roberts added.

According to Roberts, Carib Cement’s recent price increase is cause for concern since the plant demonstrates susceptibilty to external shocks in ways that could threaten its viability.

“Of course, we have long advocated the need for a period of special protection to local manufacturers in order to protect our domestic industries from the vulnerabilities associated with one-way market access and cheap imports,” said Roberts.

He added that while the prevailing circumstances made special protection a difficult proposition to successfully argue, “the long-term implications for job loss, economic deprivation and social instability should inform our decision”.

The island’s only cement manufacturer, Carib Cement recently imposed an 8.5 per cent increase on its product hours after informing the nation that it could not produce enough cement to meet market demands. The announcements sent tremors throughout the construction industry recalling events last year when the company supplied tainted cement to the market resulting in a virtual shutdown of the industry.

A waiver of the 40 per cent Common External Tariff on cement to protect Carib Cement has been in force since then, allowing the importation of cement by independent suppliers. And last week, in the wake of the current shortfall in production, government relaxed a Port Authority surcharge from US$5 per tonne to US$1 per tonne to make imported cement more competitive.

Roberts, in his letter, asked for an update on the construction of the new kiln in order to ascertain “a true sense of the short and medium-term implications of these developments on the future direction of the Rockfort plant”.

According to Roberts, Carib Cement was well aware that issues of efficiency and productive capacity have occupied the minds of the unions over the years.

This, he said, had prompted the union to place the implementation of productivity-improvement measures on the agenda of its collective bargaining process.

There is a role for the management and the unions to partner in the interest of securing the competitiveness of the plant, Roberts argued.