21 Day Strike Notice Still In Effect for Stevedores

A notice of intended industrial action to come into effect on Friday remains intact, despite a lengthy meeting between the Christian Workers Union and the Port of Belize Limited. The ongoing negotiations are in respect of working hours and remuneration for stevedores who are presently working in excess of fifteen hours in some instances. Since the twenty-one day notice was issued, both parties have been in discussion with the Labour Department with a view to break a deadlock on the issue. Those meetings have at times been described as testy and today was no different.  After a daylong round of talks, C.W.U. President Evan ‘Mose’ Hyde emerged from the meeting to address the media, as well as a handful of waterfront workers gathered in front of the Labor Office.  According to Hyde, a counterproposal will be submitted to the management of the port in the days ahead, however, the imposed deadline continues to inch dangerously closer.

Evan ‘Mose’ Hyde, President, CWU

Evan Hyde

“It was a very, very heavy bit of back and forth with us.  We basically described to them what our counterproposal would look like, as our members would be able to tell you that to be able to put that counterproposal into numbers is going to take a lot of work and so we told them we only met with them yesterday morning to get their agreement as to what form our counterproposal would take.  Now our accountant is going to flesh that out with numbers.  There are several variables, you see, when you are trying to figure out because the essence of our counterproposal is that while we believe that we are empowered and we believe that the Minister of Labour is empowered to deal with this matter legally, as a matter of goodwill, our members approved our counterproposal that says if we are to work for fifteen hours as our ceiling and money is not the issue for the port, that essentially the way you would deal with that is to adjust the rate so that our members’ net earnings per year is not affected.  But to figure out what those rates would be when adjusted to workout that final value is going to take some time and so we’ve been working back and forth on that issue with the port.  But we also had issues that we felt needed to be looked at because we are at a position now where until we are comfortable and confident that this process has actually changed and this negotiation has actually changed, we are not going to take off the twenty-one day notice that we have given.  And while I must say that we were able to make some movement, we are going to reconvene here tomorrow afternoon.  As of now though, our twenty-one day notice is still in effect.”