Turning back now to our interview with the president to the PSU, the union is calling Government's December 15 vaccine mandate for all public officers who want to keep their job, quote, "Vaccine Dictatorship"
They are referring to Circular 79 of 2021 titled "Mandatory Vaccination Essential Workers and Other Public Officers".
The PSU says it was not consulted and believes it is discrimination. The UNION president told us more:
Dean Flowers - President, PSU
"The government has two choices, they can respect the collective bargaining process and sit and have a conversation with the workers representative, the public service union of Belize, that's their first choice. Their second choice is that we go to court and cost the Belizean people money. For the government to think they can unilaterally do this and that we will take it sitting down, they are wrong. We are going to court and we will fight this through the courts and we have yet to seek our legal advice but we know Supreme Court is there as an avenue, there's an option of an injunction, there's the option of challenging any dismal as being a constructive dismissal by this administration. There is again, challenging the change in terms of conditions of service unilaterally without the agreement of the other parties and we also are looking whether this is discriminatory against public sector workers because it's discrimination. No other sector is being forced to do this without having access to their workplace but we cannot continue to allow this kind of cabinet dictatorship, which by the way is printed in bold in Plan Belize that they will be doing away with."
