Unions say G.O.B. response inadequate; will announce plans Wed.

The growing dispute between labour and management over the firing of four B.T.L. employees is heading for a showdown. “Our demands were not met,” says a release from the National Trade Union Congress of Belize, which has scheduled a press conference for Wednesday to announce their next course of action. Those demands, issued Friday to government, were for the reinstatement of the workers by noon on Monday. What government promised prior to the deadline’s expiration was that the Acting Labour Commissioner will be conducting an investigation into the termination of one of the four, Belize Communication Workers Union General Secretary Christine Perriott, and will report his findings by the sixteenth of March. That move, according to the union, was not adequate.

Perriott told News Five that on Monday evening the union’s executive met with Minister of Labour Francis Fonseca to discuss the situation. She says that following that meeting “decisions will have to be made” but she was unable to elaborate, maintaining that the members of the B.C.W.U. would have to be informed and then agreement reached before anything could be publicised. That meeting of the B.C.W.U. membership was scheduled for five-thirty today. Perriott says while the union continues to seek a way forward on the issue, she will exercise her own legal options and met with her lawyer today to further that plan. The N.T.U.C.B. press conference will be held at two o’clock Wednesday at the office of the Belize National Teachers Union.