Water Front Workers Prepare for Confrontation at Port

They were just days away from signing off on a settlement but tonight the Christian Worker's Union and the waterfront workers it represents are preparing to take on the Port of Belize limited. The union this evening issued an emergency call to stevedores, supporters, and families to be at the port at 6 am. CWU president Antonio Gonzales confirmed this to 7NEWS a short while ago saying that union leaders have learnt that the owners of the private port will go behind their backs and start hiring stevedores. Gonzales says this is an act of bad faith since a final agreement between the two parties had been ratified and only needed to be signed. It couldn't be signed today or tomorrow because chief mediator Assad Shoman unexpectedly left the country and won't be back until Monday. According to Gonzalez, tomorrow the workers would have relented form their long intransigence and requested employment forms to hand in on Monday. But Monday will be three days too late for the workers since the Port Authority, which is the governing body, has reportedly given the private port a provisional license to load and offload vessels. For Gonzalez, that simply means that as of tomorrow, Luke Espat's Port of Belize Limited can legally start hiring its own stevedores and putting them to work and that is exactly what Gonzalez thinks will happen. But not if the union or the stevedores have their way as according to Gonzalez, livelihoods are on the line. Gonzalez wouldn't venture to say what to expect tomorrow morning, other than, "anything is possible."