The BTL Communication Workers' Union's work to rule continued into its second day today and soon they'll have company. The Public Service Union's Council of Management met last night in Belmopan and agreed to its own programme of industrial action.
On October the 11th, the PSU will institute a go-slow and a work to rule. The union is protesting the wage freeze and the 2.5% BTL dividend agreed to at the annual general meeting on Friday. The record low dividend is of consequence to the Public Service and Teachers Unions as they hold 1.5% of BTL's issued share capital or just over half a million shares.
The unions were given 565,000 B shares in 1994 when the Esquivel administration singed them over in lieu of a promised wage increase. In 2004, the Musa administration then sold the shares to Jeffrey Prosser's ICC, without asking the union's consent, and had to get them back from Prosser and then had to pretend, rather lucklessly, that it never sold them in the first place. Of course, by the time the union got the shares back, government and Prosser had swapped their B shares, which come with greater rights and privileges, for C shares which have few rights. Despite union requests, government has never given back those original B shares basically because it cannot as Prosser transferred those shares to the RBTT where they are held as collateral for an Intelco loan. Sound confusing?...well, like the post Prosser telecom landscape, it is.
