So, while getting the stevedores to play nice with the employees of Central Bank, City Hall, and, Social Security, will Hyde be able to the finally get the stevedores an agreed-upon collective bargaining agreement with the management of the Port of Belize?
A completed CBA between the workers and the owners of the Port has famously been the most stalled set of negotiations - probably in the history of trade unions in Belize. Audrey Matura, who is an attorney, was not able to complete the process. Dale Trujeque, who is a labour specialist, left without that objective completed. So, will Hyde succeed where these two past presidents could not?
He told us that they have done most of the legwork to for him to come in and complete it:
Reporter
"Do you think you can succeed where they have been unable to?"
Evan Mose Hyde, New CWU President
"I don't see it like that. I see it that it's possible that they have done so much, that they have brought it almost to the very brink where it's a matter of just going back at it one more time. I think I will benefit greatly from what they have been able to do. I think that they have brought this issue far down the road. One has to accept that the circumstances are a little bit different in that you have a receivership and then you have what you would call the overcast clouds of uncertainty of what happens there - the whole privatization process which lead to where it has kind of travelled. But I believe that in both instances Audrey Matura did tremendous internal work with CWU. You must understand that she came in just when the union was pressing the reset button. I think that Dale in his short time there did a lot of the technical blocks to ensure that we are moving along the way towards the collective bargaining agreement. So it's not a thing where now I am somehow competing with their not able to achieving this point, no. I think its rather that I finish off what has been a long journey, unnecessary long, I hope that both sides now know that the fact that 12 years has gone by without a collective bargaining agreement is absolutely undesirable and I am hoping that we can get together in the not too distant future and really end this chapter, because I think for them, the workers of the water front, for the stevedores, for them to be without an agreement in my view is unjust at this point in time. I think it has to be. We have to come together, we have to put the effort and we have to put the energy. So I am hoping for that."
We'll follow up to see find out what level of success the CWU makes under his leadership.
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