7 years after the last collective bargaining agreement was signed between the CWU and Belize City council, and after months of negotiating, both entities have managed to come to a compromise that will benefit both parties. They signed a new agreement this afternoon, which underscores a mutual dedication to fair labor practices. Both the mayor and the CWU president spoke on what this agreement entails for all 148 workers.

Bernard Wagner, Mayor, Belize City
"It really guides wages, it guides benefits, it guides how you negotiate in terms of conflict resolution and that sort of thing. So our full package document, but it really covers the interest of both the workers and the employer."

Reporter
"And those interests consist of?"

Bernard Wagner, Mayor, Belize City
"Well, we mentioned something earlier in terms of the allowances that we were able to really increase. We had the paternity benefit where we increased the days for paternity leave from 7 to 10 days."

"We also increased those staff who were at the scale of 5, so they were able to get from 16 days vacation days to 20 days. We were also able to increase like bicycle allowance from $35 per month to $40 per month for those eligible staff who uses their bike for council work."

"And we also looked at water cycle allowance from $60 per month to $75 for those eligible workers again. So, in a nutshell it captured a lot of benefits for staff and we were constantly, as a group, both the union, ourselves trying to reach the middle ground to ensure that workers' benefits were at the forefront."

Leonora Flowers, CWU President
"Even though the time we had COVID, we had change of, we had elections, we had all of that, many of the times the delay was in agreeing to the actual text when it comes to interpretation of the conditions that were in there."

"I must say at the end we agreed on those to our satisfaction, and so we're now able to sign and move on."

The CBA will remain in effect until November 30th 2027.