And from the tangled tale of love and loss, to a loveless marriage between employers and their employees. Not much has changed out at the Port of Belize, with ships still waiting to be unloaded. But, yesterday morning, the new minister responsible for ports, Michel Chebat, met with the CWU. Well, nothing concrete came out of that meeting and they were scheduled for another one today at 3:30pm. The results of that meeting are also unclear at this moment because, according to the president, Evan "Mose" Hyde, he needed to meet again with his membership to discuss the way forward.
But he gave us an update this afternoon before that meeting. He explained that there were certain details he couldn't disclose at that point but did say it seemed like the government was leaning towards making some sort of compromise with them:
Evan "Mose" Hyde - President, CWU
"What I can say is that, it's very difficult for me to disclose what all is happening in the meetings. I can just say that, in principle, the government has engaged and has asked or has put forward the possibility of making an offer to our members. And yesterday, our position to them was, we needed it in writing, out of our due diligence and our standard operating procedures, that's when something is valid to us and then we can go towards our members with it and so essentially, we have been waiting for it in writing and it is not yet been giving to us in writing so that's where we are. I don't know what happens now insofar as the employer and us. I know that we meet with the minister and respective heads from the Belize Port Authority this afternoon at 3:30. I know that we, if that meeting goes as we would want it to go where there is some formalized offer that we can take to our membership, we will take it to our membership this evening and get what it is their position is. Of course let me just say for the record that the offer I can speak is conditioned on our members going back to work. And of course that is the concern of everybody involved, all the stakeholders, the general public, the employer, our members especially. Not working means not making money so it's a situation that is extremely fluid and we hope to give every effort to see if we can have a breakthrough to resolve the gridlock that exists at the port."
And that's for the matter of compensation for the sugar ships that had sailed to the Big Creek port last year. But what about the other issue the one that had launched the stevedores into a full blown strike? Well, Hyde told us that in the case of the men who were rejected for the roles of general foremen, that the tribunal met and made their decision:
Evan "Mose" Hyde
"The essential tribunal basically got our rebuttal submissions from both parties and they met and they made a decision so they summoned the parties together this morning, that's why we're here, and their decision on the matter that we had brought to them were given. We deemed their rulings consequential, they have stated that on the matter of our members who were primary substitutes who we have contended are supposed to be confirmed in their respective gang, the tribunal has accepted that there's no basis on which the employer should be rejecting that. The tribunal has also ruled that our contention, that the people who we have determined to be the now primary substitutes should be confirmed as the primary substitutes and should be receiving the protection of insurance and should be getting their respective earnings in so far as retirement statements and the tribunal has ruled in support of that position that we have put forward and that effective today the employer should be recognizing them officially as primary substitutes and that their retirement benefits should be retroactively started on the day on which we submitted our complaint which would be July 13th of 2021. On the big, big matter of the redundancy package, the tribunal has ruled that the matter of redundancy package and the agreement of March 2020, that the parties should be negotiating according to that agreement, terms of payment."
And, as Hyde said, the situation remains fluid, but things are heating up because we have confirmed that PBL is gearing up to sue the CWU for what the company calls an "illegal strike." They say that the matter is before the Essential Services Arbitration Tribunal and this meant that there was no need for the stevedores to launch a strike.
But because the CWU decided to strike, the Port says that exposed them to liability. How much? PBL says its economic loss is $1,000,000 (one million dollars) so far. PBL is now preparing to take legal action, and plans to warn the union to end their strike to minimize their liabilities.
