The situation remains fluid at the Port of Belize as the negotiations continue between the members of the Christian Worker's Union and the Receiver's management. 10 minutes before news time they finished their meeting, and a major breakthrough came out of their all-day discussions.
According to the Port's Receiver, Arturo Tux Vasquez, they have signed an agreement that all items that are up for discussion must be put on the table for negotiations by August 31. In addition, anything they have agreed upon will be placed in a Memorandum of Understanding, and both sides will be bound by that.
If there is anything left over after that date, negotiations will continue on ONLY those pending matters.
But today, that all day meeting did not sit well the stevedores who camped outside the entire time.
The stevedores received word that the management was considering reducing the number of members in the gangs in order to improve efficiency.
Well, the stevedores would have none of that talk, and today, they called us to vent about the current management even considering that idea.
We spoke to Arturo Tux Vasquez, the Port's Receiver, and he told us that it was a misunderstanding, and that reducing gangs does not mean that anyone will be laid off.
Here's what both sides told us, beginning with an update about the day's meeting:
Arturo Tux Vasquez - Receiver, Port of Belize Ltd.
"It's now 20 after 6, and we're just finishing. We started this morning at about 9:30, and actually as you know from the past news and what happened a couple weeks ago, the first agenda item was for the Labour Commissioner to join the meeting, and to assist us in trying to put together a schedule of dates for the negotiation to be completed. To be honest, that took most of day. We managed to sign that off around 4 o'clock, I would say, and I'm not sure of the Commissioner had updated you on that, but we signed an agreement. And basically, I can give you a copy of that, but the agreement - we decided that we would try to finish these negotiations by August 31."
Raymond Rivers - Stevedore
"He said that how, he has to cut the gangs, and he doesn't have any money. We need new men out there, because out there is getting rougher. The breeze is blowing harder, and the sea is rough when it's sugar time. We would want more men on the gangs, and he is talking about cut?"
Arturo Tux Vasquez
"Decreases in the gangs, and by decreases, that does not mean that we'd be laying off anybody. It just means that we're trying to make the gangs smaller, more productive, and more efficient. But, as we just mentioned to the Union just a few minutes ago, that proposal that we submitted to them, they preferred not to address that today. They made it clear that they wanted to leave that for next week Tuesday, when we meet again, and for them to give us their counter-proposal from that. But, from our understanding - and from what we have seen from today - they prefer to leave it at the status quo. Our proposal is obviously not the status quo. We need to reduce it, and not significantly. But by reducing, it does not mean that we're laying off anybody. That would need further discussions, and we believe that will happen next week. What we did today, is that we emphasized to them the importance of deciding on the gang sizes because, we need to know the size of our employment, to be able to know what financial commitments we can make. It's a little bit premature to be discussing the details because we really did not discuss it, but from my own personal opinion, and from the comments that they made earlier today. I think that they're assuming that by reducing the gangs, we're talking about laying off people, and that's not what we are talking about. We're talking about reducing gangs because we believe the gangs are little too big. We're not just saying this without looking at it properly. We have provided recommendations to them as to what areas of the gang we could reduce."
Negotiations will continue on Tuesday. It is part of a speeding-up process, which will also see negotiation meetings every week, for up to an entire day and a half, and in the presence of the labour Commissioner.
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