Former BTL Workers Begin 6-Day Protest Over “Unpaid Severance”

Former Belize Telemedia Limited (BTL) employees are taking their fight for severance pay to the streets, staging a multi-day protest outside the company’s headquarters in Belize City after a landmark Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruling affirmed their right to payment.

Members of the Belize Communications Workers for Justice (BCWJ) say they have waited months for BTL to comply with the ruling, which confirmed that retired workers are entitled to severance even if they receive a pension. On Tuesday, about thirty former employees demonstrated outside the company, chanting, “Severance now, no tax… no tax.”

Past BCWU president Emily Turner said negotiations have run their course. “We have sent several letters… now the time for talking is finished,” she said. “We want a date on when a cheque will be handed to every single employee.”

The CCJ ruling, delivered in November, came out of a case brought by ten former BTL employees and has since opened the door for dozens more retirees to demand severance under the Belize Labour Act.

Former union leader Michael Augustus argued the issue is not affordability but priorities. “It is  pittance. Some people just about fifteen thousand, forty thousand,” he said. “Pay the people their money before we go and spend eighty million on an old house.”

Augustus was referring to BTL’s proposed eighty-million-dollar acquisition of Speednet. Protesters argue that if the company can finance a major buyout, it can settle outstanding severance obligations.

The group has been granted a six-day permit to protest and says it will remain outside BTL’s headquarters daily from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. until severance payments are made.