CWU signs collective bargaining agreement with CPBL
Audrey Matura-Shepherd
The Christian Workers’ Union has signed a collective bargaining agreement with the Citrus Products of Belize Limited. It covers only about one hundred workers, but it is an achievement for the union which has shown some movement after a long period of stagnation. Today, President Audrey Matura-Shepherd told us more about the agreement signed with CPBL, saying that it benefits both the workers and the company.
Audrey Matura-Shepherd, President, Christian Workers Union
“The main thing in that proposal was that workers got a salary increase and that is always good news for workers. It is done in four phases….phase one is in the first year; they get seventeen cents increase on the hour. Phase two, which is the following year, they get eighteen cents on the hour and then the third and fourth year they get twenty cents increase on the hour. That aspect is good, however, that’s an agreement that was negotiated by our predecessor and now it was just being implemented. We had some fine tuning we had to do and of course we know that CPBL has a new board of management so we wanted to make sure that they also agreed with what was negotiated by their previous board. So it’s simply that. I am sure there are many other things that we will have to work with CPBL, but that’s the start for the workers for now.”
Reporter
And this is for administrative workers? What workers under the company?”
Audrey Matura-Shepherd
“Unfortunately, the only workers we have with us…it is not the entire staff. We don’t have the administrative staff and we don’t have the hourly staff, the weekly staff…and we have the grove. But there are other branches, other category of workers like the security that are not members of the union. So the people who are benefiting right now is only about a hundred people who are our members. I’m told that in the past, the other branches or areas of the company had tried to become unionized, but they were not able to because when they did the poll, the workers voted against it. However workers were explaining that under the previous administration, they were being intimidated. So we already hinted to the new administration that we will be looking at unionizing the rest of the employees, which is to the benefit of the company. If you are a company that you say you give fair compensation and benefits to workers, you should have no problem sitting with a union and creating one document than rather negotiating individually with each employee.”
The agreement was signed on June twenty-fifth and the CWU is still looking to resolve the longstanding negotiations between stevedores and Port of Belize Limited.
