7 News Belize

PSU & GOB: From Compromise to Crash
posted (May 14, 2020)
When we left you last night - it was with the news that the PSU and the Government of Belize had reached a compromise in their dispute over a salary increment. After weeks of back and forth over whether the annual increment for public officers would be foregone or deferred, the two sides seemed to find common ground. The meeting featured the government on one side, and the PSU, the BNTU and the APSSM on the other.

So, things seemed all good until this morning. The Prime Minister opened up an almost three hour long press conference claiming - basically - that the unions had moved the goalposts overnight:

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"We had, I thought, reached agreement subject only to ratification by the Unions' general membership. My CEO took copious notes and at the end recited for the Unions GOB's final proposed position. That was what I thought they agreed. We reduced that oral agreement to writing and the Financial Secretary sent it off to the Unions. Lo and behold, though, this morning we got a response from the President of the BNTU, speaking as well for the PSU, asking that some critical words be changed. Such changes would, in my view, greatly alter the spirit of the agreement and are therefore not acceptable to Government. The Financial Secretary is in the process of writing back to the 2 unions. So we are back to square one unless they accept the language that was orally agreed yesterday.

"Where we are now is that they don't want stick by the language that had been read out at the end of the meeting, they want to change the language to say that the increments will not be foregone, they will be deferred, even though they say "differed until" retirement is reached. For me it's not a distinction without a difference. That was the crocs of the matter, words have meanings, we agreed yesterday that it was a question of foregoing the increments and I am afraid that government is determined to stick to that."

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