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The Christian Worker's Union is giving the Port of Belize 21 days notice.  A press release this evening said quote: "Stevedores will be moving from their protest to declaring the twenty-one-day' notice of intent to strike." 

This would have meant their return to work in the interim but the CWU President Mose Hyde says not so fast.  When we spoke to him at 3:30 this afternoon, he accused the Port of negotiating in bad faith:

Mose Hyde - President, Christian Workers Union
"We met with the port yesterday afternoon at the labor department with the minister and we discussed how we could deal with the issues that both bargaining units had. We established that we could attack the issues that the staff had. Those were dealt with and the staff left, after which we approached and tried to work out something as it relates to the stevedores. The take-home out of that was that the stevedores would move from being on protest and instead they would utilize that 21 days to strike with us to at the very least by the end of that 21 days have a signed memorandum of understanding that they put on the stevedores in 2015. The Port of Belize would then utilize that 21 days with us to negotiate out to deal with the matter of any possible redundancy and then at 60 days we would have a fully fleshed out agreement that would be in place to protect our members if ever ASR would move its shipping down to big creek."

"So the 21 days would give us an opportunity to create that security blanket. In the event that we did not get PBL acting in good faith. If we felt that after 21 days, listen you guys have not been available, you guys were not genuine, then the stevedores would then go on a strike whose legality could not be questioned as an essential service. We then sent out an email this morning describing all the agreements that we discussed yesterday. We waited a while we didn’t get a response, we didn’t get a response and then we got a call about midday to tell us the PBL lawyer has a problem with our email. What it is you are committing to and sign that. They said no there is something in there that makes it seem that they are endorsing the 21-day notice. We looked at it we looked at the language we changed the way we structured the paragraph."

"We want the stakeholders in the general public to know that your port sat in a meeting with stevedores, with the government, made an agreement of the way forward because they are saying that you are experiencing tremendous adversity because of the stevedores but yet at this moment in time PBL has not lived up to its agreement with us and I called the minister of labor and I said, Her response to me was, do you want me to wrench it out of them. To say well she doesn’t have the power to sense of confidence that we are with a genuine partner across the table. We can’t even get a signed email on the prescribed timetable and we are going to spend the next 21 days to create our members will face."

Of note is that last night, the protesting Stevedores allowed PBL to cross their picket to remove a container filled with perishable goods belonging to BAHA. 

Additionally, the Stevedores hold no ill will against PBL staff who, having received commitments for their concerns, have returned to work. But while the Port allegedly refuses to issue a signed, written commitment formalising discussions that Hyde claims were tabled, the strike continues.