Last night you saw Dr. Carla Barnett, the Labour Minister of State, who said that she would attempt to break the impasse between the Port of Belize and the stevedores, represented by the Christian Workers Union. That's because the clock is ticking down on a possible strike at Belize's biggest Port.
At this time, there is an impasse where the Port's management disagrees with the number of hours that the stevedores work on a given shift. CEO Arturo "Tux" Vasquez says that they are breaking the labour law which says that employees should only be working 15 hours a day, with a 9-hour rest. He wants the stevedore gangs to implement a shift system, which the stevedores have rejected outright because they say it would substantially cut into their earnings.
They say that those extended hours, is what feeds their families, and this shift system would leave them hungry.
Both sides refuse to concede anything on this point, and last week Friday, CWU President, Evan Mose Hyde wrote to the Prime Minister informing the Government that the stevedores will take industrial action in 21 days.
So for the past 2 days, Dr. Barnett has been meeting separately with both sides to get a clear understanding of the issues. This evening, after she had met with CWU and their negotiating team, the union and stevedores called a press briefing to announce that the main issue remains unresolved, and so, as far as they are concerned, the countdown to industrial action continues.
Here's how the CWU president explained it this evening.
Evan Mose Hyde - President, CWU
"We have met with the minister Dr. Carla Barnett along with her CEO and the acting labour commissioner twice, we met with them yesterday afternoon and we met with them this morning and they met with the Port of Belize negotiating team after they did with us yesterday evening and I believe that they are meeting with them this afternoon. The first meeting we held with them was basically a fact finding mission on the part of the minister where she asked us to basically layout how it came to this from our point of view. After meeting with both sides, she came to us this morning advancing ways forward for us to see if we can work this out. And what I can say now because we cannot get into a lot of details, I will say that we are still on our 21 day plan, we have not taken it off. Being a responsible negotiating team and union, we are participating fully with the intervention coming from the Ministry of Labour. We have said both in the negotiating's and in the letter written thereafter that our position has been while it's obvious we have a diametrically opposing views on the matter of the hours of work proposal, that there are other items and matters for us to negotiate on and we have repeatedly asked for us to proceed on to those. The others on the other side have been adamant about not doing that. We have been told that they seem to have moved away from that position and might be willing to come back to negotiations but we are still not sure if they are willing to negotiate on items that we want to negotiate on. So we have indicated to the minister that, yes we will go back around the negotiating table but we want to speak about determination for our members. While the Ministry of Labour has gone to tell us that they have asked the Solicitor General to give a legal opinion on the matter of the hours of work proposal."
And to get a clear understanding of why the stevedores are resisting this shift system, we asked the President to explain it from their perspective. He said that essentially, it;s a bread and butter issue: less hours, means less money.:
Evan Mose Hyde
"Essentially the stevedores don't work the way the traditional worker does his thing, 9 to 5 and like that. They work ships and there's one particular ship that they get to work every 8 weeks for extended periods of time; which earns them production bonus and overtime. This is the gravy ship, this is the rice and beans ship, it has fed their families, it has clothe their children and sent them to school. And so when you come and you propose, well not so fast stevedores, you might have been doing that all the while but you know what, you need to work under the law and you cannot work for those bonuses anymore. You are proposing something that anybody in the shoes of the stevedores would be immediately apprehensive about and would create significant trepidation. That's what we have, it's a fundamental change when all the while you know that when that BEC ship is coming, you will get your gravy now, production bonus times, good times. You go to work extended period of time, just like they do in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean but you do so once every 8 weeks. You get to relax after that before you have to do that again. So in our view, the law is not written to prevent workers from taking home revenues, the law is written so as to protect workers from employers who would want to abuse them. This is the ship that they depend on for their financial stability."
The union is also insisting that since this hours of work issue remains a point of disagreement, they believe that Collective Bargaining negotiations with the Port's management can still progress if they both put that issue aside for the time being. President Hyde said that the stevedores, who he represents, want to negotiate on their salaries, and he hopes that the Port's management will be willing to return to negotiations on this and other unresolved issues:
Evan Mose Hyde
"Sometimes it's better to use they lay term, we want to talk money, our members want to talk money. You understand because this is all money, at the end of the day it is all about money. They are worried about their bottom line, our members are worried about their pockets and we want to talk about money if we're going to go back around that table and hopefully we can get to that. So it's possible, I don't know how long the Sol Gen is going to take, it's possible that right now, the port has agreed to come around the table and talk money with us. And when we get around the table and we're talking money and we feel like, okay, you are talking money to us in a respectful manner and understanding our position, you see there is some outstanding benefits due to our members you see. 6 years' worth of pay increases that no come yet. This might not be the thing whe deh wa have as right up there but for our members this is what we want to talk about brother. So I think we are hoping that we can engage and I have heard it be suggested and I have to say it again because it's easy to try to characterize people who are going on strike as if though they are being premature, they don't want to give and take. These brothers have sacrificed a man per gang, a man per gang. You know what that has caused in the ranks of stevedores? Just so that they can create an atmosphere where they can be a kind of good back and forth give and take. A man per gang means that 8 men, no longer benefit from the stevedore through, it means that a quarter million dollars, 250 thousand dollars that would have been in the pockets of 8 people per year in the community, is now in the pockets of the receivership. Man give and take, the record is there, the stevedores have been willing to do that."
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