Earlier in the week we told you about the Minister of Education's plan to bypass the teachers union - and go straight to the school managements to discuss making up teaching days for time lost due to the 11 day strike. The Minister's position is that teachers will be paid for those extra days - and the suggestion seems to be that they can stand to lose a few days' pay right now, since they'll make it up during those extra days.
And then yesterday Faber told LOVE News that the deadline for submissions for November's paysheets had passed, and he hadn't heard anything from the Teachers Union President on how to proceed - so the paycut for 11 strike days would go into effect. The Minister said, quote, "we will proceed with the deductions in the month of November."
Well that dismissive comment stirred the BNTU beast, and today President Luke Palacio called a press conference to say Faber's mistaken on that deadline for the submission of paysheets:
Luke Palacio, President - BNTU
"We know that traditionally the pay sheet for salaries from the different managements are usually submitted in the second week of the month. However, the minister in his presentation has indicated that yesterday Wednesday would have been the deadline for those managements to submit those pay sheets. Again, we find that that is a part of his continued effort to try and see if he can have the BNTU buckle under his pressure. Unfortunately a number of managements has seemed to have comply with that request. And I say this because I know. As a member of the teaching service commission, usually the first Friday of the month there would be a circulated list of persons who would have gotten recommendation from their respective managements to the teaching commission to have them become employed. And so those persons would then make it on to the pay sheet which would have been submitted, again, usually by the 9th of the month."
But no headway can be made on this issue for one simple reason: the Minister and the Union can't agree on a format to meet. As we've reported, the Minister has agreed to meet with 5 members of the Union Council of Management, and the Union insists that he must meet with all 25. Palacio says Faber has no excuse not to meet with the 25, it's just that the Minister wants his way:
Luke Palacio, President - BNTU
"The minister's insistence that he only wants to meet with 5 members of the BNTU's leadership. We've made it absolutely clear to him and we continues and there are some in the media who continue to say it is Luke Palacio that does not want to meet with the minister. Again, I have to make it absolutely clear, the council of management met last Friday and it was immediately communicated to the minister that the council of management has decided that he is to meet with 25 members of our council of management. We even went further to offer him, of the space he has at his North Front Street office is not adequate, this conference room is adequate for him to come and meet with us. He said to the press that he has never met with all 25 of us. And we are saying to him and we are saying to the nation, there are two occasions we know in the recent past that he met with the 25 members of the council of management of BNTU. The time when he wanted us to agree to the special permit as it relates to teachers who provisional licenses would have been expired. He invited the entire council."
"There is a process and we are prepared to continue to follow that process, because we must maintain the integrity of the Belize National Teachers Union."
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