Tonight, there is uncertainty at the Port of Belize after the stevedores walked off the job today. Their drastic action came only five days after the CWU met with the Prime Minister to negotiate a redundancy payment. Up to Friday, things seemed encouraging, but instead of making progress, the CWU today decided to bring talks to a halt with snap industrial action - timed no doubt to coincide with tomorrow's election.
Today the CWU held a press conference to lay out their revised hardline position.
Last week Friday we thought that the Stevedores had managed to arrive at a consensus in their negotiations with GOB, but today however the CWU held a press conference to inform the media that they have halted negotiations again. Their president told us why and what went wrong this time.
Leonora Flowers, CWU President
"The last time we were here I think we said we were getting to negotiations into the sugar money and I remember saying to the media before that we had said to the interim board on the 19th of December when we met I think for the first time that we want to get any negotiations of the sugar money out of the way before we start into the other salient matters of our dialogue with the port of Belize and it's new owner, majority owner the o government of Belize. Unfortunately, the proposal that was given to us on 15 February did not meet the standards that we would have wanted it to meet and so we rejected it outrightly everything in the proposal we rejected there were some discussions I would say off the record behind-the-scenes whichever term you want to use, and so we ended up going to a meeting with the Prime Minister and several of his Belize city based members, minister of government. they made an offer to us that day, and that offer was for the change in gang size and several other things coming directly from the proposal."
Upon reviewing the proposal they then asked their attorney to create a settlement agreement that would be proposed over to the Government. Flowers says that after discussing it with the union members the Stevedores made a reluctant decision to go forward with what was presented in order to sugar money discussions out of the way, but when they went back to the table things did not play out in their favor.
Leonora Flowers, CWU President
"Unfortunately after three days, we went back to the team for the government and after three days we could not come to an understanding of any mutual ground. None of that was able to strike. And so on Saturday last week we informed the PBL that our position is that we will not be able to continue to dialogue with them as their attempt was to strip away terms and conditions that we have in our CBA."
"So the end is we have rejected what they have offered. We have told them point-blank we will not discuss the CBA and its terms. The CBA for us is a sacred document we signed it, and we will abide by that until we go to the CBA negotiations. Needless to say, they don't agree with us they say we had already agreed which we have not. I say we have not agreed until we have agreed until we sign a document. We never agreed we were discussing to see if it was palatable."
One of the things that was put forward by the government was to reduce the gang size from 14 to 13, but this request however created concerns among the stevedores given that they have gang sizes with up to 17 members. The CWU believes that they are being taken advantage of and so they have decided to halt their negotiations. They say they are prepared to discuss the sugar money, and the redundancy package by itself. But will not touch what is within the CBA
Leonora Flowers, CWU President
"So this, this offer came from the government of Belize. They can see otherwise it came from the government of Belize to say they will override whatever exists in our CVA. I have never seen an override in a document that offended me so much and it offended our team and that was one of the issues that brought us to full stop."
When the stevedores walked off their pier head and left a container undone - the Port stepped in to set it back on the ship - so that the ship could leave port.
The Port will be open for business as usual tomorrow - and resumed operations today.
