CWU Still not Pleased with Government, Despite ESAT

On December eighth, 2023, the Government of Belize took over the Port of Belize Limited, and the interim board they appointed is still in place. Since mid-2024, the Christian Workers Union (C.W.U.) and PBL’s management have been negotiating a new Collective Bargaining Agreement for the stevedores. On January thirty-first, 2025, the C.W.U. issued a twenty-one-day notice of industrial action to the Minister of Labor. In response, the minister set up an Essential Services Arbitration Tribunal to resolve the dispute. However, the C.W.U. argues that the government can’t just rely on this tribunal, which includes three government representatives out of five members, to fix the mess they’ve created. The C.W.U. has warned the Government, the National Trade Union Congress of Belize, and the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industries that moving forward with this flawed tribunal is nothing short of a farce and a tragedy for the workers and the people of Belize.

 

Leonora Flowers, President, C.W.U.

“Our concerns surround the fact that it does not bode well for the CWU, its members and all the workers of Belize that the government owns the company.  The government as its management that has not made a decent offer to the stevedore and then when we reach an impasse and we indicated such and we sent this to the minister, the government turns around and empanels a tribunal and the government, again, chooses its three members to sit on a five-member panel.  NO matter how you cut that, no matter how you slice it, that doesn’t look fair.  There is no justice that we can await coming from such a makeup of the tribunal.  And we don’t say this to cause any slight on the tribunal, they believe, they may want to believe that we are putting their integrity into impunity.  We are not.  We are not looking at the person, we are looking at how it looks on the face of it.  We cannot ask the same government who owns the port to set up a tribunal to give us justice.”