C.W.U. Brokers Amicable Agreement with G.O.B.; Stevedores are All Smiles  

There was a significant breakthrough during a meeting with Prime Minister Briceño earlier today that had stevedores smiling from ear to ear.  It’s a rare occasion for waterfront workers at the Port of Belize Limited to be happy or satisfied with anything that the government proposes, but this afternoon they were all cheerful, following a meeting of the Christian Workers Union and senior members of the Briceño administration.  They filed in one by one at Charter House, led by President Leonora Flowers, and they were there for a singular purpose which was to iron out several issues that stevedores had been having with their employer.  As you would recall, they effected a work-to-rule last week that saw cargo ships rerouting to the Port of Big Creek to discharge cargo.  At the end of today’s meeting PM Briceño told reporters that government is making a payment of one point six million dollars to stevedores in lieu of redundancy.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“We have an agreement and basically we’ve been working on the number of gang size and the number of hours that we’re going to be working on and we believe that we have an agreement at this moment.  What will happen now is that both lawyers, our lawyer, the Port of Belize’s lawyer, and the CWU’s lawyer are going to get together and work out the agreement.  Pretty much it has been spelt out properly and we believe that by tomorrow we’re supposed to be able to sign an agreement for us to be able to move forward.  There is a general consensus from both sides that these work stoppages is not in the interest of anyone, that it does not help the Christian Workers Union, nor the stevedores, nor does it help the Port of Belize nor the country of Belize.  We recognize though that there is competition and that some boats are threatening that if this is not sorted out that they will consider going south to the Big Creek Port to offload their cargo.  So I believe that today, we managed to settle pretty much all of these issues.  We will be signing that formal agreement tomorrow which will form part of the new CBA that is going to start the work on the new CBA pretty much immediately as soon as we finish this.”