BELMOPAN, Belize, CMC – Government and labor union representatives will meet next week with Education Minister, Francis Fonseca, indicating that the government negotiating team would be entering the talks “with an open mind” even as the public sector trade unions have given the John Briceno government to lift by April this year, the current freeze on increments to public servants.
Increments are usually between three to five percent of salaries and are paid at different times of the year for foreign workers. The issue was discussed in December last year between Prime Minister Briceno and a joint trade union delegation.
“The government’s negotiating team has scheduled a meeting with the JUNT (joint union negotiating team) for February 15, next week. I don’t want to get ahead of that meeting. We are going into that meeting with an open mind.
“We are going to have, as we always do, a respectful discussion with them. We will hear from them what the outstanding issues are; we will dialogue with them, we will make a note of those issues, and as we always do, we have to take those issues back to Cabinet for further discussion and decisions that have to be made,” Fonseca told reporters.
President of the Public Service Union (PSU), Dean Flowers, speaking at a news conference here on Tuesday night, told reporters that the unions are demanding that their increments be reinstated by April 1 this year.
In August last year, the Ministry of Finance issued a circular stating that the government would not be engaged in new hiring, creating posts or filling vacant ones, and approving salary advances and new allowances.
Flowers told reporters that as it relates to the increments of public sector workers, Prime Minister Briceno had informed the joint unions that not only was he not prepared to restore increments in the upcoming fiscal year but that he was also not prepared to restore public officers on the point where they ought to be when his government decides when to resume the payments of increments.
The unions have also raised the issue of the prolonged negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the Belize National Teachers Union (BNTU) and the government, indicating that 14 years have passed since the signing of the new deal.
BNTU president Elena Smith, who was also present at the news conference, sought to explain why the process had been drawn out.
“We are getting to year 15 and have not yet closed our CBA. I believe that is history. I don’t know which other union would have had to wait that long to conclude a collective bargaining agreement. There is one aspect to the CBA that we have not been able to conclude,” she added.
But Fonseca said the government has been in office for only two years and that the unions had allowed the previous administration “to kick the can down the road and never held their feet to the fire. “Now they want us to resolve all these issues in two years, coming out of a COVID pandemic where the economy was on life support. We are just beginning to get back on our feet. So we are committed to working respectfully with the Belize National Teachers Union on these issues. “There are issues that are of importance to us. The increments, the CBA, and the allowances are all important issues because we know our teachers make sacrifices. But you can’t have one standard for the previous government where you allow them to do this for 12 years, get nowhere, and now you want to say to us, in two years, you must resolve all these issues,” Fonseca added.
The Education Minister said the government is “absolutely committed to resolving these issues during this term in office, but we have three years to go.”
He said 95 percent of the CBA has been agreed upon, acknowledging that the remaining five percent “does not issue solely in the province of the Ministry of Education.
“They are largely financial matters which require the Ministry of Finance to give their approval and Cabinet to give its approval. So we are going to work with them. Proposal 22 is a critically important issue that we have to discuss under the CBA.”
The BNTU said that teachers were also facing transportation and hardship allowances for teachers. But Fonseca told as it relates to travel assistance, his ministry spends approximately BDZ$10 million (One BDZ$=US$0.49 cents) on transportation, including buses for students and hardship allowances. Fonseca said a meeting would be held on Friday with the BNTU, where the collective bargaining agreement will be discussed.
Meanwhile, the main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP), is expressing support for the unions noting that promised legislations under Plan Belize that are yet to be passed, inflation, and price gouging.
In a statement, the party called on the Briceño administration to “lower the price of gas, bring back the increments and resupply our hospitals or face the wrath of the people.”
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