CWU administration has failed to honor legal obligations

Dion Pitter

The Christian Workers Union was suspended from the National Trade Union Congress of Belize in mid-August and tonight it is facing expulsion from the umbrella organization if it decides to forego a scheduled general congress on Saturday.  The upcoming meeting is for the membership of the union to elect new executives in light of ongoing allegations of financial misconduct and irregularities.  The date for the assembly had been initially agreed upon during a meeting held at the Labor Office on August nineteenth, following unrest among the nine entities which comprise the union.  In a press release issued over the weekend, the N.T.U.C.B. states that it has been reliably informed that the C.W.U. is waiving the impending convention in favor of keeping its current administration.  That administration, led by President Antonio Gonzalez, is unrecognized by the N.T.U.C.B. because its executives have failed to honor their legal obligations.  The stevedores, who also form a part of the union, are once again up in arms charging that the remaining eight entities have taken a decision which contradicts their standing agreement.

Dion Pitter, Member, Christian Workers Union

“The situation is that well all of unu know that the twenty-sixth, we should have the congress based on labor department, cancer centre. We get a call to go to a meeting Friday fi know when we get ina dah meeting to have thirteen people weh just willing to vote yes based on Gonzalez noh have no money, we noh have no money to have no congress. Fi we position dah no. Why fi we position that no? Because we done extend by the law of the constitution, we done extend three months to have it the twenty-sixth. And we di support the N.T.U.C.B. press release weh dehn put out if we noh have the congress by the twenty-sixth, dehn wah kick we out. So we cannot afford that so we object to the thirteen people dehn we say yes. And fi we position and why we object if fi we constitution and fi we constitution say this dah weh wah happen. And we noh have elections for ten years, we noh have financial reports; we broke. We had…when we had the meeting on cancer centre, we decided to have an auditor go in by Clyde and Burrell and dehn say noh waste your time. If yo go in there, too much loops and uphold something, people might look bad and unu might look shape. And fi we position based on all of that, we cannot give Mister Gonz another term and I want make it be clear that we have the right to question our leadership; it is in our constitution. And I di beg the members, the members of the fifteen entities, please come out. And I also the beg, the same fifteen members weh represent, weh mi deh around the table, unu bring out unu candidate because that dah di decision weh we mi make; that unu wah bring out unu candidate and we wah got wah democratic process the twenty-sixth of October.”