In 1995 when government couldn't afford to give them a raise, instead it gave the Public Service Union and the Belize National Teacher's Union high yield BTL shares worth about 2% of the company. But until recently the question of who actually controlled the shares was very much in question after government announced that it had sold all its BTL Holdings for US $89 million.
But all those questions should have been settled last Friday when the Prime Minister made quite the ceremony out of an event where he handed the union's shares. We say "should have been settled" because tonight, that matter is not settled and it seems that the PM pulled a little switcharoo and gave the unions a newly issued lot of what's called "C" shares; not he original "B" shares they had been promised 9 years earlier.
Well now the unions are saying they want what's due to them and that is 480,000 "B" shares and 180,000 "C" shares. What's the difference? Well although they have the same monetary value, "B" shareholders enjoy special rights and privileges under BTL's articles of association, rights that that are not granted to "C" shareholders. Those special privileges include the right to hold a company meeting without the "C" shareholders - a privilege that's now only afforded to Jeffrey Prosser's ICC because traditionally the group that controls BTL, does so with "B" shares. As it now stands, with the Prime Minister's handover of only "C" shares, the unions have been cut out o9f that exclusive pie.
But why would government re-issue the shares as "C" shares with a new certificate dated May 6th, 2004, the day before they were handed over? Well only government can truly say but former company executives we spoke to say that two possibilities emerge: the first is that ICC wants to hold all the "B" shares and GOB is doing Prosser the favor of cutting the unions out of that club, or that GOB did sell ICC the shares as it stated in its press release of April 7th and had to nicely ask him to give them the shares back but what they got back were "C" shares.
The PSU's president Dylan Reneau yesterday told us that the unions will now request the original allocation from government, which basically means 'wheel and come again.' It's a cute spot for GOB which is intent on making major political mileage out of the shares issue and we're not sure how government will explain it away. When we tried yesterday, we were unable to reach the PM's press officer Ernesto Vasquez for comment.