And while Shyne stands ready to march with the unions, once upon a time so did Mr Briceno and the PUP.
It's a sad cycle of political opportunism - and that maybe why the union isn't asking for any friends as it forges ahead on its own.
On Tuesday, the joint unions held their press conference, where they spoke about a number of issues they had with the government. One of those concerns was that there hasn't been a signed CBA between the ministry and the BNTU for almost 15 years, and this has especially been affecting teachers who have been working for years but decided to leave the education field.
Well, today the media asked the Minister of Education about it, and he said that for 13 out of those years, the UDP was in the government, so how can the BNTU expect them to fix all these problems in just two years? He added though that the GOB negotiating team is going to meet with the unions to air out these issues.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"Well we have been in government for 2 years, they allowed the previous government to kick the can down the road, never held their feet to the fire, now they want us to resolve all this issues over two years, coming out of a pandemic, COVID pandemic, where the economy was on life support. We're just beginning to get back on our feet so we're absolutely committed to working in a respectful way with the Belize National Teachers Union on these issues, they are issues that are important to us, the increments, the CBA, allowances, these are all issues that are important to us because we know that our teachers make sacrifices. But you can't have one standard for the previous government where you allowed them to do this for 12 years, get nowhere, and now you want to say to us, oh in two years, you must resolve all these issues, no, we are absolutely committed to resolving these issues during this term in office but we have three years go so we are going to work with the BNTU, in fact I have a meeting with them tomorrow where we will specifically discuss the CBA, and I should make this point about the CBA, 95% of the CBA has been agreed upon, there are only about 5% of the issues that are outstanding, obviously these are serious issues and they're not issues that are solely in the province of the Ministry of Education, they are largely financial matters which require the Ministry of Finance to give their approval and Cabinet to give its approval so we are absolutely going to work with them."
And the BNTU also complained that teachers in rural areas weren't getting enough to cover their travel expenses. The PM had said yesterday that the money they would spend if they expanded the teachers' allowances could be used for more important things. And today the Education Minister said that while the teachers do get allowances, the budget for that is up to the Ministry of Finance.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"First of all let's make the point that teachers are getting the allowances, many teachers in rural communities are getting what they call hardship allowance, transport allowance, we spend as a ministry over ten million dollars on school transportation, that school transportation isn't just for students, it's for teachers as well, getting teachers to school, so we're investing in our teachers. But the outstanding issues, we are going to work on them with what they are talking about is an increase in the hardship allowance, increase in these allowances, and also expanding the allowances to other category of teachers. It's not that they're not getting it, it's about expanding and increasing. So we will sit down and talk with them but as I just said, they're not strictly matters for the Ministry of Education, those are financial matters and ultimately the Ministry of Finance will have to sign off on them."
The meeting between GOB and the joint unions is scheduled for February 15th.
