C.W.U. Reiterates Commitment and Willingness to Negotiate with P.B.L.

Evan ‘Mose’ Hyde

Going back to the ruling of the Essential Services Arbitration Tribunal, Mose Hyde says that had the decision been in favor of the employer, stevedores would have been compelled to honor that outcome.

Evan ‘Mose’ Hyde, President, C.W.U.

“How long do we have to wait for a ruling of the tribunal to be enforced and, as anybody could say, that’s a fair and reasonable expectation that we live in a country that they say is by rule of law.  And because of understanding if the tribunal had ruled against them, they would have had to comply.  They would have been upset, dehn wahn pout, dehn wahn rail up, dehn wahn cuss, but how do you get around the tribunal?  And so now, we are over a year, fourteen months, fifteen months since that tribunal’s ruling, fifteen months of which we saw about ten months of our members working two gangs, working in a spirit of guess what, mek wih just try do this, even though the employer has turned down and opportunity to get this in black and white. I can’t accept that we are going to have only stevedores and CWU having this commitment to get around a table.  We cannot accept that what is going to happen is that this press conference is going to fall on deaf ears and that there’s going to be no movement to get us around a table to look at this issue and move forward.  I think it would be a very unacceptable scenario if we are going to be waiting around next week Tuesday to see what kind of notice is going to come out, what we’re going to hear from the Ministry of Labor.  That’s why we are coming forward today.”

News Five has made several attempts to get a comment from the management of the Port of Belize Limited, however, our calls went unanswered.