It's been a few weeks since we've heard from the Belize Communication Workers for Justice, but they have not given up their fight just yet. According to the representative, Emily Turner, she has been getting information that those former workers who decided to take BTL up on their deal and collect what the company is offering have been taken advantage of. She also explained that the BCWJ is working with an attorney before they take their next steps. Here's what she told the media.
Emily Turner, Rep, BCWJ
"Publicly we have seen that BTL have been sending these requests to invite employees to come in to them and claim the severance. The date that they have sent is that they are paying interest from November 5th 2025. We have already put to the public that that amount of interest is significantly lower than if you are paid an interest since you left the company and I think we have explained in many ways that when you left your severance should have been paid and that interest would have to be rolling over since you left. What we have learnt is that a lot of people who are going in for the money are being short, BTL is calculating it as they see it fit, they are being paid on contracts that they took after they have served so for example lets say I worked for 25 years and they gave me a contract with significantly less amount of money, like let's say I got a contract that was $10,000 or $20,000 but when I was there my salary was $40,000 then what BTL has done is that BTL is paying the severance based on the amount of the contract period so a lot of people are getting chanced out of what their severance rights is all about so even though they put out this notice and tell people, come out, we're prepared to pay, it's all kinds of mischievous acts that is being done and you know when you go and you deal with BTL as an individual, they take advantage."
"There's situations where they don't have records for you so what do you do? You go to Social Security, you log into the portal, you look at your contributions, you take it to them and they are saying no, I don't want anything from the portal, you need to get something from Social Security, an official document and I understand when you try to get these officials documents, contributions, your history, Social Security has a policy that it can take you up to a month, four weeks to get that information so they are making it very difficult even though they say and they make the public believe that they are willingly paying the severance and I'm going to term it an underpayment on the interest, they are making it very difficult for people."
"I want to also inform that formally the BCWJ has engaged counsel to research and to strategize for us how we will be approaching this. We are currently, this week we are supposed to get that strategy, what would be our legal position and how we will move forward but I think a lot of people have said it, the only way to really get BTL to comply would be to take them back to court."
