And after that funeral procession, it's a mystery how the unions will follow it up. But what is clear is that the strike continues, because the BNTU and PSU have rejected the last proposal from the government presented during Thursday's meeting.
During a press conference this afternoon, president Elena Smith told us that they had been hopeful before going into the meeting - going so far as to say that the strike could have ended that day. But what shattered any hope of e resolution was the Prime Minister's unexpected statement to the country - one given before the unions had a chance to review the letter they received with the new offers - offers which they feel weren't in their favor.
Smith explained there was one offer on the table that had been verbally agreed upon that this new letter conveniently left out.
Elena Smith, National President, B.N.T.U.
"One of the things that we had placed on the table was the matter of increment freeze and how we could rectify that increment freeze and we had asked the government side for at the end of the freeze for our members to be placed on the correct scale at the end of that freeze, because you would understand that if it is that my increment is frozen and I'm not put back on that correct scale after that, it means that for the rest of my career I would be losing and so telling me that at the end or at the time of retirement you would then use those calculations, those would be based on my scale that I should be on, really and truly is not fixing the issue, because we needed our people to move back. So as oppose to putting back us on the scale, it would then mean that if I am now at 6.1 and you freeze my increment for 3 years, at the end of that 3 years where do I go."
"The government side agreed and said yes we can do that and so there was verbal agreement on that. However, when we got the last letter from the government that, that they are referring to as the last letter, that matter was not included and when we queried it we were told that based on advise they could no longer do that and so we left the table with that offer, we took that offer to our members and our members accepted the offer and that was one of the offer that our members were willing to accept and would have helped us to reach a conclusion at the last meeting. However, that decision was pulled back and so our members now are saying well there is nothing that we are getting. You are talking about the government giving the union so many things, but the one that is most important to us you have remove off the table and so we continue to fight for that, because that is very important to us as workers. The increment putting us on the correct point on the scale was accepted by our members and our members also accepted the promissory note. Had we gone back to that meeting on Thursday with these things on the table, the meeting would have concluded then, because we would have had acceptance by the unions, because our members had already given us that mandate."
