The employees of Belize Telemedia Limited (BTL) are still staking their claim to 23% of the company—shares that the Government of Belize acquired in the August 2009 nationalization of the company, on the basis that they were among the 94% shareholding under the control of the Michael Ashcroft group of companies.
Those shares were held by Sunshine Holdings Limited for the BTL Employees Trust. However, BTL workers are still not the ones controlling that trust, and they plan to file a claim in court to get the rights formally transferred to them.
Senator Paul Perriott, the man elected in a special general meeting in August 2010, to hold the post of president of the Belize Communications Workers Union (BCWU), told Amandala Thursday that members of the union have agreed to go to court to remove trustees Dean Boyce and Keith Arnold, and put their own representatives in place.
Boyce was the chairman of BTL’s executive committee until the 2009 nationalization; Arnold was the chairman of BTL’s board of directors. While Boyce and Arnold still run the trust, and have been challenging Government’s nationalization through that entity, it is the government that now holds the shares the workers say they want.
Prime Minister Dean Barrow has told the BTL workers that he agrees firmly to reserve 10% of BTL’s shares for the union (out of the 23% shares held by Sunshine), while assisting them to make a financing arrangement to purchase that 10%.
However, he has also indicated that the government would also support the court proceedings by the workers to get control of the trust company.
In addition to looking to the court to resolve their claims over the trust, the members of the BCWU have agreed to submit the dispute between the former executive, headed by Mark Gladden, and the executive headed by Perriott, to court for a resolution.
The union is caught in a quandary over who will negotiate with BTL’s management to seal a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Management has said that it does not recognize Perriott and the executive elected in August, because the former executive has taken the position that the elections were unconstitutional.
Amandala was informed by both Gladden and Perriott that attempts were made to resolve the dispute internally; however, Perriott informed us today that at a meeting on Monday of Belize City staff, who he said comprise the majority of union members, it was agreed that a petition would be sent out to all branches to support a filing which should be made by their attorney, Fred Lumor, SC, by the end of the month.
Amandala’s attempts on Thursday to reach Gladden via phone (to get his comments) were unsuccessful.