Still No Mention of Compensation for Stevedores

Evan ‘Mose’ Hyde

C.W.U. President Evan ‘Mose’ Hyde said that after months of waiting to hear from the Port of Belize regarding payment, stevedores began to second-guess the team that was initially tasked with looking after the payment.  A new team was subsequently voted in but the situation persisted.

Evan ‘Mose’ Hyde, President, C.W.U.

“When we recognized that that patience was starting to run out and a new team was put in place, the very first thing we did was to say, “Listen, we need to go to Belmopan and we need to sit with the regulatory authorities, we need to say to you, “Hey, listen.  We know you have a thousand things going on, but we came here in person so that you know, temperature on the waterfront is going high.  They want to know when is this going to manifest itself because we have written to PBL and they have said to us, we are not going to negotiate.”  We did not go in front of PBL and throw stones, bricks or try to break entrance.  We did not riot, we did not protest.  We went to the regulator and said, “Boss, hey, come on.  Weh di go ahn, fu we membas dehn di run outta patience.  We will have problems, what are we going to do?  You are aware of the tribunal ruling, months now have gone by [and] they are refusing us.”  That’s responsible action on the part of our members and the team, going to the regulator and saying, “Come on, step in.”  Proactively seek out conversations to say, let’s deal with this.  Now we wait for now a response coming from the regulator and we get none. We are stretched out, we have court cases, the union finances are being pressured.  We have to act, we have to find a responsible way forward to register our dissatisfaction with the fact that the ruling of law is failing them.  And so, they took the most available way to demonstrate.  Listen, this thing is serious.  And what did they do?  They did what they have a constitutional right to do, to say listen, we are going to go with our contract that we have with you.  That’s all our members did and they are being characterized as being bad actors, as extorting.  They are demanding what every citizen of Belize has a fair expectation to be theirs, that the rule of law is going to be fair with them.”