And while KHMH workers are in talks with their board and government to get a 6% raise, members of the BEL Energy Workers union say they want 8% - spread out over four years, meaning 2% per year. They say that their members haven't gotten an across-the-board raise for 5 years - and that talks recently broke down over this point. Now, mediation was supposed to have started at the end of June, but the union says that won't work so they took it to the streets, or, more appropriately, the highway in front of BEL's corporate headquarters this morning. 22 workers staged the protest during their lunch hour where union leader Marvin Mora told us that they were close to coming to an agreement with management - until the issue of the across the board 8% raise came up:..
Marvin Mora, Belize Energy Workers Union
"The position: the negotiation in the beginning is that we are negotiating for 2 reasons. 1, because we believe it is the right thing for her company to do, to increase our benefits, to increase our salaries and if you look at the profit and the things that the company has paid out already, shares 87% increase in shares and bringing down customers' bills all the way down to almost 40 something percent over the past 3 years and we have not receive nothing from the past 5 years in terms about across the board increase or across the board benefit. Then the union believes that it is a right company to do. The union now is finding themselves in this position where we are now at the stage where we need the public to understand where we are. So it's our customers. We are worried about our customers. We don't want to shut out our customers or do anything that would affect our customers. So if you notice we are doing our lunch - we are holding this demonstration."
Jules Vasquez
"BEL's argument I suspect is that well we don't want to raise consumers rates and that if we have an across the board increase. We would have to increase their rates."
Marvin Mora, Belize Energy Workers Union
"Not at all Jules because actually it was BEL who had introduce a kind of negotiation style that I referred to as a straightjacket-approach because what it does, it basically ties the union to an amount of money before you start to negotiate and you tell the union well I have so much thousand dollars to negotiate per year and that's all I can afford other that I would have to increase the rates. Our proposals are well within that."
"The company has made 36 million dollars. if you divide that in 365 days a year you would get around one hundred and 20 something thousand net profit every single day that these very same people here make happen for this company. In reality we're not that far apart. The only problem is that we took their proposal and we said we wanted the across the board increase and they said they want conditions with those which we find utterly unfair."
Jules Vasquez
"Will you all ramp up the industrial pressure if there is no head way with having management soften its position?"
Marvin Mora, Belize Energy Workers Union
"Yes, definitely. Everything is on the table right now."
The Energy workers union will continue their lunch-time picketing tomorrow and Wednesday.
BEL fired off a release today saying, quote, "At the commencement of negotiations, the BEWU's proposal was for an increase in salaries and benefits amounting to 90% of salary. The Company rejected this proposal for salaries and benefits. In April, the BEWU presented a new proposal for a 62% increase in salaries and benefits. The Company presented a counter proposal for 24%. The BEWU walked away from the negotiating table and led a sickout…the Company increased its offer from 24% to 29% with two conditions.
IT adds, quote, "Over the past four years, BEL employees have received an increase of over 20% in salaries."
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