BELIZE CITY, Mon. Apr. 19, 2021– In a press release dated Monday, April 19, the Belize Communications Workers Union (BCWU) expressed its sympathy to 18 union members who lost their jobs following a redundancy exercise carried out by Belize Telemedia Limited.

According to KREM News, these persons were all employees of the telecommunications company.

The release said that the union and the company entered a cost-optimization initiative, which included an agreement that union members who are employed by the company would forego some benefits and accept the deferment of a few other benefits, in addition to the freezing of their salaries.

However, the company found that even with these measures, the financial position of the organization had not sufficiently improved. They thus decided to undertake a redundancy exercise to “improve efficiency and the continuous reduction in operations.”

An executive of the Belize Communication Workers Union said that the exercise was carried out in compliance with the Labour Act and the workers’ Collective Bargaining Agreement.

“The Executive of BCWU expresses its sympathy and recognizes the impact this exercise has causes its members. However, they would like to assure their membership they have exhausted all options to circumvent this exercise,” the release from the union said.