Mayor Bradley is “genuinely mistaken”: Matura-Shepherd
The uncertain fate of the employees from City Hall’s Security Department has been much in the public spotlight since last week, and has come under particular scrutiny because of the process under which the workers have been declared redundant by Belize City mayor Darrell Bradley.
After January 23, when the workers were given their termination letters, the Christian Workers Union (CWU) stepped forward to defend the staffers because, according to union president, Audrey Matura-Shepherd, the workers’ interests were not put into consideration and the Council did not adhere to the appropriate protocol in the way it went about laying off the security officers.
This past Monday, Mayor Darrell Bradley – in a fiery interview with the media – refuted those claims and vigorously defended CitCo’s stance, stating that his council had followed all the necessary procedures where the redundancies are concerned.
In an effort to bring some sort of resolution to the matter, and perhaps find a middle ground on which both parties can agree, the Labour Commissioner, Ivan Williams, got into the picture and a meeting was subsequently held later that afternoon between Williams, the Mayor and the CWU president.
Today, the CWU president Matura-Shepherd called a press briefing at the union’s headquarters to provide an update on that meeting.
The Mayor had mentioned on Monday that the termination of what he said was only 26 security workers would become effective this Friday, February 7, and that he is well within his legal rights to make those terminations effective by this Friday.
In the briefing today, Matura-Shepherd said that Bradley is “genuinely mistaken.” She insisted that the Mayor should have given the union one month’s notice of the council’s intention to terminate the workers in keeping with what the Labour Commissioner mandated last week, and maintained that the CWU needs more time to settle the issues arising from the imminent termination of the workers.
She stated, “We know that for now, the Mayor has agreed that the terminations will not take effect until this Friday. We are in negotiations [and] we are telling him Friday is not enough [time] to negotiate with him. I believe he genuinely made a mistake because when I spoke to him in person, I literally took out the legislation and went through it step-by-step and told him what it said. He never disputed it with me then. But somewhere in his mind, he’s confused with the notice to the union as opposed to the notice to the workers. [Therefore], what we found out was that there was a genuine – I would want to say at this point a genuine — mistake on behalf of the Mayor where he has mistaken ‘Notice to Terminate’ with the notice you have to give by law to the union.”
She added that the CWU is simply being lenient and showing extreme goodwill by only requesting two weeks to sort out the issues on behalf of the workers, since the law states that the union should actually be given a month’s notice. It is left to be seen whether the Mayor will honor that request – which has been formally submitted to him – seeing that he had only agreed to keep the officers on the job until this Friday.
According to Matura-Shepherd, more time needs to be allotted to the union in order for it to conduct a review of the Council’s reasons for the redundancy, as well as for the privatization of their Security Department, because the union’s president has serious concerns about the proposal to carry out the privatization as a cost-cutting measure, as was stated by Mayor Bradley.
For that reason, the CWU will be hiring financial experts to examine the concept of privatizing the Council’s security services as a cost-cutting measure. Matura-Shepherd mentioned, “According to the Mayor, this is all about saving money. [However], there are some salient points that worry us. For example, the new security officers going over to Ranger Company will only be paid $3.50 per hour as opposed to the $4.48 per hour they are getting at the Council at this moment. [Also], their work time will expand from an 8-hour shift to a 12-hour shift and they will not be entitled to overtime because the way the shift is being rotated is that one run[s] into the other and there is no overtime. From a strictly labor point of view and a human resource management point of view, that is not good news for the security officers. When we look at the savings now, as opposed to what the council is paying right now and what they are going to pay Ranger [Security Services]: The contract with Ranger has not been signed as yet, but is being negotiated. Through the contract, Ranger will be charging the council $7.00 an hour – that’s what we are told. It might be a little more, but the ballpark figure is $7.00 an hour. So, if you look at it, you are moving from a system where you are presently paying the employees $4.48 an hour to work for you, to a system where you are going to pay a private company $7.00 an hour and we are still trying to find out and work out the savings. That’s to me very critical because, at the end of the day, it is all about money. And so, because of those things, we are bringing in our financial experts. One week is not enough for us to crunch the figures and show the mayor what our position is in terms of the savings.”
The CWU has written to the Mayor requesting an additional week, but has not gotten any response as yet, while the works are in the pipeline to generate a proposal to serve the best interest of the soon-to-be unemployed security officers.