Strike action may be less than a month away for S.S.B. workers

Countrywide the majority of employees of the Social Security Board called in sick on Monday.  The sickout was to get the S.S.B.’s attention over what they feel is their employer’s effort to derail negotiations for a salary increase.  The action came on one of the institution’s busiest days of the month, the fourteenth, when employee contributions from companies across the country are turned in.  It forced the S.S.B. to dispatch minority workers, some of whom are contract workers, to the branches that were most affected by the sick-out; that cost is still being tallied.  And while the fragile situation at one of the country’s most prominent quasi-government institutions has delayed business, the end result of any further industrial action could translate into even greater woes.  News Five’s Marion Ali sat down today with Antonio Gonzalez, the President of the Christian Workers’ Union to find out what the future holds for institution and employees.

Marion Ali, Reporting

Monday’s sick-out of upwards of sixty percent of Social Security Board employees delivered a blow to the institution’s business.  The workers are demanding an increase of their salaries, which were last raised in 2007.  In a telephone conversation, the Board’s Chief Executive Officer, Merlene Bailey Martinez, told News Five that the sick-out has delayed the processing of contributions by about two days and has racked up a bill for the dispatching of employees who did show up to work to other offices to fill the void.

Merlene Bailey Martinez

Bailey Martinez did not wish to comment further on the matter because of its sensitive nature and said the Board only wants to reach common ground with the employees.  She did, however, offer to respond, if she saw it fit, to the comments that President of the Christian Workers’ Union, Antonio Gonzalez has made on the issue at hand.

The union, which represents over one hundred employees of the SSB that called in sick, feels that the institution has been dragging its feet and that has had a negative effect on the Union members.

Antonio Gonzalez, President, C.W.U.

“The members are very dissatisfied and through this dissatisfaction it has created some ingredients to this dissatisfaction, like frustration, like stress, like the low morale at the office.  So whether these things, and we call it sickout and they call it industrial action, these things gear towards employees getting, feeling an ill about the whole situation at Social Security and the way management is dealing with the current negotiations.”

Antonio Gonzalez

According to Gonzalez, the negotiations for the employees’ new salary increase began back in 2008 when the Christian Workers’ Union submitted proposals, a process that took about a year for the negotiations to begin.  But during the process, Gonzalez said the Social Security Board shifted the goalposts.

Antonio Gonzalez

“So they systematically started to introduce these policies—policies on loans, policies on education loans, policies on subsistence/meal allowance, policies on sick leave, policies on, the latest is the to and fro (from work employment injury0 which has touched our members deeply—so going to work now you are not covered.   So there’s a compilation of these policies, which has somewhat derailed the negotiations.  And in October of 2010, the Union submitted some new and revised proposal thinking that this would be a way forward for an amicable settlement between both parties but to date we haven’t received any response to those proposals.”

Instead of responding to the proposals, Gonzalez said, the Social Security Board wrote this letter, dated January eighteenth, in which it states that a salary increase will only be palatable if dealt with in conjunction with a review of benefits contributions, and that the Board has decided to act expeditiously to consider in particular an increase to certain categories of pensions.  That was not satisfactory to the Union members and Gonzalez says they intend to take their actions a step further.  Today, the Union wrote to the Ministry of Labor, issuing a twenty-one day notice of intended strike action, which means that if the negotiations do not end in a settlement before March sixteenth, the employees of the S.S.B. will go on strike nationwide.  Marion Ali for News Five.