B.N.T.U. President Smith Says PM’s Speech Undermined Union Leadership

Elena Smith

President of the Belize National Teachers Union, Elena Smith, was also on “Open Your Eyes” today. She feels the Prime Minister’s decision to address the nation instead of meeting with the Joint Unions Negotiating Team, gave the impression that the union leadership was not being entirely transparent with the information being conveyed.

Senator Elena Smith, National President, B.N.T.U.

“It did hurt and we have been hearing comments that this was done because the leaders were not presenting to the membership all the information and that is no way true, any at all.  As a matter of fact, the other leaders can tell you that because we have presented our members the entire package, just as they have given us, we have been accused by our own members of supporting the government, of trying to force them to accept what the government is saying and all of those kinds of comments because we go to them and present to them exactly what the government side presents to us.  So, what it also did to us is that whenever we go into these negotiations we go with a mandate from our members.  So our members tell us beforehand what are the things that they would accept or whether they would accept or not.  At this point in time, there was no time for us to go back to our membership to even try to explain to them what that meant because we didn‘t have that information so we couldn‘t share anything with them as to what that meant and what it was for them.”