On Friday you heard the President of the Christian Workers Union Audrey Matura Shepherd blaming the government for going to the House tomorrow to vest First Caribbean Bank's assets to Heritage Bank. Matura Shepherd said it is a betrayal of the FCIB workers carried out with the full complicity of government. Well today the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance said that if anyone has betrayed the workers, it is their union - which failed to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement in a timely fashion:
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"Despite numerous invitations from the bank to the CWU to submit proposals so that the negotiating process over a new collective bargaining agreement could have begun for well over a year. The CWU did not respond. Similar to what happening at the Port or what happened at the Port. When The CWU leadership finally responded, it was something like 2-3 weeks before the sale of FCIB to Heritage was announced. If they had responded when they were supposed to have, no doubt there would have been a new CBA in existence and we would not have anything like the difficulties we are facing. So, that union must not try to make a virtue of incompetence. That union must not use its own default to try to politically pressure government into not discharging its obligation with respect to a situation that affects the banking industry, in which two independent private commercial entities have concluded a sale. All government is doing in passing the vesting act, is to facilitate the transfer of the assets. Of course we sympathized with the workers at FCIB. And since the negotiations have started for a new CBA, however late, we are hoping and I've spoken to the country manager of FCIB that those negotiations will quickly produce some agreement. But while we are waiting on that, there is no need to delay the passing of the vesting act for several reasons including this more fundamental one that the leadership of the Christian Workers Union and there is supposed legal knowledge and expertise in that leadership, isn't there? and if that leadership would have gone and look at the precedence for the vesting act, you will see that when we pass the act tomorrow, it doesn't take effect until a commencement date is fixed by the minister and the bill itself provides that the minister can't fix a commencement date until certain things have happened. So this does not in any way prejudice the negotiations between FCIB and the staff. This is not as have been suggested; government putting an end to a process which will then deprive them of the opportunity to continue their negotiations."
"The anticipation is that the transfer of systems, all that remains to be done is not likely to be concluded before the end of the year. So there is no question of the act coming into force certainly before all those matters have in fact been tied up. So you see how when you only hear one side of the story and from somebody who is determined to lie, how you can walk away with completely the wrong impression."
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