C.W.U. Tells CitCo to Run the Counter Proposal to the C.B.A.!

According to the C.W.U., the Belize City Council is not forthcoming with a counter-proposal, and their membership refuses to accept it. Mayor Bernard Wagner has indicated that the Council will not provide a counter-proposal or engage in negotiations as they are heading into the municipal elections. He wants to leave the C.B.A. business until March thirty-first, because according to the City Council, they refuse to bind any future council with last-minute contracts. Now, according to the Belize City Council, the C.W.U. is pushing for staff increments that amount to half a million dollars every year. The Council says that other proposals include a thirty-percent increase in the funeral grant, an increase in severance eligibility payments; new increased salary scales; increase in allowances, some of which have doubled and tripled; among other proposed measures. So, Mayor Bernard Wagner is sticking to his guns – that the issue will be dealt with after the municipal elections. But President of the C.W.U. Evan Mose Hyde told reporters that he cannot accept this position and refuses to see the pandemic as a hindrance to the process.

Evan “Mose” Hyde, President, C.W.U.

“The process of presenting a proposal and getting a counter proposal is equivalent to getting into the bargaining period. So, to be denied a counter proposal is to be denied a standard right of a bargaining agent and its members to engage in respectful negotiations. We cannot begin to negotiate until we know what in our proposals you have a problem with.   The counter proposal usually takes about six weeks roughly for us to get a response. But the fact that we are now fifteen or sixteen months in this kind of circling pattern waiting and waiting to get our counter proposal is absolutely unacceptable. In our view, we don’t have an explanation for it. We cannot accept that the pandemic is so disruptive that having are placement, upgraded version of the present workers contract is unable to be completed or at the very least a counter proposal presented to us. What we are asking for and what we expect is a routine, standard, reasonable and fair engagement with the bargaining agent to start this process of negotiation.”