146 Former BTL Workers Take Severance Fight to Court

The battle over severance pay at BTL is heading back to court. One hundred and forty-six former employees have joined forces and retained an attorney from Trinidad and Tobago to pursue what they say is fair compensation. Organizer Emily Turner says the group believes it is owed more than what BTL has offered and is raising concerns about rejected claims, unpaid interest, and missing records.

 

Emily Turner, Organizer, Belize Communication Workers for Justice

“We managed to get 146 people to say that they wanted to move their case forward with an attorney. What brought us to that is we have a couple things. We have the six percent interest. Some people got paid and the six percent interest was not included from the day they left. So you have a group of people with that. Then you have some people that they wrote BTL, if you remember, BTL had said send us your claim and we will look at it and respond in fifteen days. None of that happened. So I have people that wrote them and wrote them until they’re blue and they have not heard back from BTL. Then we have a number of people that BTL arbitrarily have decided to disqualify. So they have written to these people and say you do not qualify for severance. So I believe the 146 make up those groups of people. I know some people are asking what happened to the issue of severance so Im here to update that it has not been cleared and employees tried everything. They tried to show their evidence of what they had when they started working, social contribution history. Many people tried a lot of things to try to get it settled with BTL but at the end of the day, when it comes to holding BTL accountable, we have found that task is very difficult. So we engaged an attorney, Virtuous Chambers, from out of Trinidad and Tobago and they wrote BTL a pre-action protocol letter on Tuesday advising them that 146 former employees have engaged them and we expect full disclosure. BTL have seven days to acknowledge receipt and they have thirty days to provide full disclosure for every single claim that is in front of them.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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