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BEL Union Still Bex
posted (May 16, 2014)
4 BEL employees will be redundant effective tomorrow. They work at the Westlake Gas Turbine facility and today their union was still trying to secure a place for them at BEL.

A week ago, the company's corporate services manager told us that the workers have basically acted stubbornly by refusing to accept an offer to be retrained so that they can be re-assigned to different posts within the company.

But the union says they are being chanced.

At a lunch time show of solidarity of the union today, the president told us that the company representative was being disingenuous because the offers they made were not as attractive as she put it. Here's how he explained it:

Henry Balan, President - BEWU
"They are offering the guys who has work for you for 20 years a position - a contract for one year. I don't believe herself would take an offer of that sort and this is when the union came in. Now that the union came in, they got defensive and say that termination is the other position. We've been through mediation and that has been the position from management - there has not been a word of change even at the end when the minister came in. We ask them is the position still at that? Why isn't we trained the guys and keep them? How did the contract came about and that's the problem from the union's side."

Daniel Ortiz
"We've been hearing chatter that the union will at some point if this matter is not resolved to the liking of the union's position or the position of the employees that you guys will consider industrial action seriously. Is that on the table? Is that even a matter to consider?"

Henry Balan, President - BEWU
"I would like to say that the executive are taking all the decisions made from our meetings. The members will decide what will be our next plan of actions. We have seen that the members have reiterated this to the board - we are taking to the members and they are giving us directives to go - it seem we are going in a manner of escalating things little by little up. If the members decide for us to do an industrial action - so be it. I will stand 100% behind these guys and execute what is being mandated by our members."

Another point of contention that the president told us about is that the company didn't negotiate in good faith with these 4 employees because the offers were made in private, where the union was bypassed. He told us that the union finds it unacceptable that the company didn't include the union which negotiates for the best interest of the employee. But as we told you their posts become redundant effective tomorrow, and the board will meet with the Union on May 27, 10 days after the fact.

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