4 weeks ago, 7News told you about the 6 former employees who were taking Belize Water Services Limited to court for wrongful termination. Viewers may remember that these 6 were sent home after scandalous letters circulated about employees who were supposedly engaged in inappropriate relationships within the company.
The story didn't progress any further because Justice Courtney Abel left the matter in the hands of the attorneys from both sides to come up with an amicable out-of-court resolution to avoid a drawn-out trial.
Well, those employees now believe that BWS is intentionally dragging the process out, and refusing to bring it to a closure because it would mean settling with them and paying compensation.
Today, for the first time since the scandal broke, they held a press conference to give their version of the events.
The main speaker described to the media how the investigation into the inappropriate gossip made the leap to a mass termination of their services because of so-called redundancies:
Don Gillett, Former of BWS Employee
"All they did they just ask you; who you think could have done this, who you know was gossiping around the company and this and that topic. Just things like that going as far as throwing out names to you; what do you think about this person, you think he could have done it? What do you think about that person? If I don't know and you pitch a name to me - I don't know. It could have been anybody. Up to now as understand the investigation is still not concluded, it's still open. They just used that as some reason to say that we heard something. Even when they were delivering the termination letter it didn't say anything about redundancy. They were telling us that they needed to solve this thing. When we get the letter we saw redundancy. At no point in time for my 8 years at BWS nobody spoke to me about anything about my post becoming redundant."
"Our terminations were unfair and unlawful. The company is trying to cover their unfairness and unlawfulness of what they did by saying our terminations were done because of redundancy due to restructuring of BWS. The company did not follow the law or the collective bargaining agreement on redundancy. Besides this the company put out a memo admitting that the terminations were not because of redundancy but because of the investigations into scandalous letters that have been circulated in the company."
"The company CEO Alvan Haynes told the court in his statement that he misrepresented the reason for the terminations in the memo to the other employees. The company has shown itself to be dishonest in its actions thus far. Our reputations have been tarnished, thus all except one of us have been able to regain employment due largely to the fact that we have question about what happen at BWS in our interviews since they did not give us any recommendation and gone as far as instruct members of staff not to give us any, coldheartedly, adding to an already unfortunate situation."
"We are stigmatized as delinquents to the public for merely exercising our constitutional rights after being abandoned by our union and unlawfully terminated by BWS."
Journett McKoy, Former of BWS Employee
"Put who we are on the termination letter to let everyone know who we are."
Michael Novelo, Former of BWS Employee
"When you go as far as telling an employee who is there probably who were your close friend, your supervisor, and you from upstairs instructing them not to give them any recommendation - I don't know what kind of company we are running there. Remember that company is not for Alvan Haynes, that company is not for Albert August. That company is for the people of Belize."
Don Gillett, Former of BWS Employee
"It's not a good feeling going into an interview with a redundancy letter from your former company after you invested all these years knowing you are made redundant and not even a recommendation to say this is for Mr. Don, this is what he did. Right away they say 'what happen at BWS?...oh you guys look familiar in deed, you are the ones with the gossiping and this and that.' Automatically we are stigmatized negatively."
3 weeks before the case actually made it to court, there was a bomb scare on the BWS compound in which a Molotov cocktail was thrown which almost caught one of the company vehicles on fire. The police investigators believed that the incident was connected to disgruntled employees who were laid off.
So, today, we asked 6 who were terminated about it, and they categorically denied it saying that it doesn't fit into their plan of trying to get the company to pay them. They reasoned that it made no sense to force BWS to waste money while fixing damages caused by vandalism, when they are trying get the company to pay them:
Don Gillett, Former of BWS Employee
"That goes back to the point I was making earlier that we are stigmatized. What happened at BWS we have no knowledge of. They said in the story that ran in the media the suspects are terminated employees. We are not the only employees that were terminated to date. Other people were terminated as well. We are the only ones who are taking this thing through the proper course, we haven't retaliated in the streets, not even in any kind of outburst of ill feeling towards anybody at BWS."
"Those incidents - we maintain our innocence, we know nothing about those. Why would we try to cost the company more money. Why would we cost them if we are seeking for more money? It doesn't makes any kind of sense. As anything occur, they need to highlight other people as well. The amount of people that has been terminated or resign or force to resign - those people as well could be suspects. We were not the only people that were terminated over this."
The matter goes back before Justice Abel at the end of the month.
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