Union releases details of port agreement
It was promised to the media for Friday morning, but up to news time, the much-anticipated joint Christian Workers Union/Port of Belize press release with the details of the agreement reached in their labour dispute has still not arrived. So News 5 went to the President of the C.W.U. Antonio Gonzalez for some clarification. Gonzalez told us that based on a meritocracy system, what the workers will get is a Christmas bonus amounting to seventy-five percent of what they were hoping for.
Antonio Gonzalez, President, Christian Workers Union
“We strongly believed, and still yet maintain that we were right that the workers should get a hundred percent. Whether it came under the system, we strongly believe and maintain that in accordance with the collective agreement that workers should get five percent. I think that after getting legal opinion and so forth we had a good case. We had a good case, it’s only that this issue came at a time whereby everybody is involved with this Christmas season and everything. So that had its effect on the situation, but overall I think that we improved our situation. Originally they were only offering or are granting fifty percent… We reached an agreement of seventy-five percent or three and three-quarter percent of a meritocracy system, based on points and percentages. Meaning that we have from thirty-five and over you get five percent. Nineteen to thirty-four you get four percent, and twenty to eighteen you get three percent. Meaning that wherever you qualify within that aspect, any of the stages, you get seventy-five percent of that. So you will get seventy-five percent or three and three-quarter percent of five percent.”
Patrick Jones
“Now Mr. Gonzalez my question to you is this. It would seem as if though it’s a small victory, they originally offered you fifty percent, you got seventy five percent. Was it worth inconveniencing the national economy to achieve this small victory.”
Antonio Gonzalez
“Well in truth, we defend worker rights and interests within the trade union movement, and as such we strongly believe that we had all rights, and the workers stood up for what is within the collective agreement. So we thought that, yes, we sympathize, we wouldn’t say apologize, but we sympathize with the public, we sympathize with the people coming from all the districts for goods and things like that. But this is all in the process of trying to defend the rights and the entitlement of workers within the ambit of the collective agreement.”
Gonzalez says that the agreement, which ended a two-week impasse, was reached late on Wednesday and the workers gave their stamp of approval on Thursday morning. Gonzalez says that a full ninety six percent of workers represented by the C.W.U. scored above thirty-five points on the meritocracy system and qualified for the maximum bonus.
