In February, the Port of Belize sued 7 members of the Christian Workers Union - including president Mose Hyde - for 1.034 million dollars. The Port claimed that their illegal strike prevented PBL from loading and unloading cargo containers for a period of eight days, causing substantial economic loss.
Well, months later, both sides are in talks to settle the dispute out of court. This was confirmed today when the legal teams appeared before Justice Lisa Shoman in chambers.
Attorney for the CWU, Darrell Bradley told the judge that talks between there have been "meaningful conversations" between the Port and the Union; that talks are "at an advanced stage", and as recently as Thursday of last week - they proposed a draft settlement agreement.
Justice Shoman gave them 6 weeks to continue towards an out of court settlement - at which time they will report back to the court. If there's no breakthrough, the lawsuit will proceed.
Notably, the Port had also gotten an injunction trying to block the CWU from spending the 1.5 million dollars it received as a compensation from the government earlier this year. But, the union managed to disburse most of the funds before the injunction could be activated. Today the CWU reported that about 400,000 of that amount remains in its account undisbursed.
