NTUCB Postpones Protest for Membership Consultation

While the UDP amps up its pressure on law enforcement, the National Trade Union Congress of Belize is tightening its own stance, postponing, but not abandoning, a planned protest as it consults members and insists the pause in the BTL–Speednet process still falls far short of the answers workers deserve. After a late‑night meeting, the NTUCB decided it needs a little more time to properly consult with its member unions and make sure everyone is fully informed. And they’re stressing this isn’t a cancellation; it’s a strategic delay to boost organization and turnout. Union leaders say they’re still far from satisfied with the temporary pause in the BTL–Speednet acquisition, and they’re gearing up to keep the pressure on until the deal is completely taken off the table. We spoke with NTUCB President Ella Waight for more.

 

Ella Waight, President, National Trade Union Congress of Belize

“We have to regroup in the sense that we still have some pending meetings that we have requested with the PUC and we have requested a meeting with smart management to meet with the employees because NTUCB, again, we do not only represent unionized workers, but workers in a whole. And we know that there may be grave concerns with the workers over at Smart, so we would like to meet with them just to try to address some of their questions and concerns and of course to inform them about their benefits and rights whenever something like this occurs, if it happens that there is an acquisition that – that the acquisition would take place. So we just would like to have an opportunity to meet with them, but we have not had any positive responses from both of those entities. Some of the bigger unions are still polling their members as to how far they would want to take the issue if it comes to that. As you know BNTU and PSU are the two largest unions that fall under NTUCB, so it take some time for them to get that information from their members. So that is happening simultaneously while we are doing other consultations. So we are far from saying we have abandoned the issue or we are not concerned anymore. That is not the case. We still are very concerned because we still haven’t gotten answers to many of the questions we asked. We have made some recommendations, as you all know, and we still have not gotten any feedback to say, okay, we’ll take those recommendations into consideration.”