Frazer and Fuentes had been prominent spokespersons for the national BNTU (and Frazer also for the NTUCB) during the period when teachers countrywide shut down most schools in protest. However, they have been accused of everything from taking bribes to losing their backbones after eight of the BNTU?s branches voted to end the two-week strike and accept the Government?s proposals to end the dispute over the new taxes and the budget.

When they visited Amandala Tuesday, the two men denied claims that they had compromised their membership through the manner in which decisions were taken during the negotiations.

On page 2 of last Sunday?s edition of Amandala, dated February 13, we ran a request submitted to BNTU president by the Belize City branch, calling for a special convention to address the controversy over the way BNTU?s decision was taken.

?A lot of these things in the request are distorted facts, outright lies, and so would make the request null and void,? Frazer said.

In the published request, which Fuentes told us he had received, BNTU is accused of calling on its members to return to the classroom, even after its umbrella organization, the NTUCB (TUC), had called for a demonstration against the Government on Friday, February 4, after approval was obtained from the general membership (paragraph 3 of the document).

Frazer replied to that charge, saying that the BNTU is allowed full autonomy, even as an affiliate of the NTUCB: ?Each union asserts its own independence within the TUC ?the TUC constitution respects the right of each affiliate to make its own decision and respect its own constitution.?

Fuentes pointed to Section 3.1.8 of the NTUCB?s constitution, which says that, ?Whilst maintaining their autonomy, [unions shall] keep the NTUCB informed of all disputes. However, the NTUCB shall not intervene until requested by the union concerned.?

He said that at about 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 3, the day before the Belize City demonstration of around 3,000 protestors, the BNTU voted on four resolutions. The results were as follows: (1) accept GOB?s proposals: 8 agreed, 2 abstained; (2) not to take part in the demonstration: 8 agreed, 2 abstained; (3) go back to school on Friday, Feb. 4, 2005: 8 agreed, 2 abstained; (4) get a 100% refund for expenses incurred during the protest from strike fund: Belize City opted not to accept the money; 9 branches agreed.

Fuentes said that he did not vote. He said that it was the representatives of the 10 branches that voted. The 10 branches of the BNTU are Corozal Rural, Orange Walk Rural, San Ignacio, Benque Viejo del Carmen, Toledo Rural, Corozal Town, Belize, Belmopan, Stann Creek, and Punta Gorda.

The abstentions came from Belize City and Belmopan, which represent the bulk of membership, but the votes of each branch carry the same weight, they explained. Frazer said that there are well over 2,000 members in the union?more have joined since the protest?and Belize City accounts for about a third of the membership.

Frazer also denied the charges in the ?special convention? request that claimed that the BNTU sent out a press release to the media before its Council of Management had met on the matter.

The two men, Frazer and Fuentes, furthermore claimed that the decision for teachers to end the strike could not have been ?unilateral,? as claimed, since there was a vote taken, according to the rules of the union.

As to the claim that the Government negotiators?Hon. Assad Shoman and Dr. Carla Barnett?had taken a document to the union that had the Prime Minister?s (Hon. Said Musa) signature, they said that claim is untrue.

?They never brought a signed document. It did not have the Prime Minister?s signature line?the 7-point agreement?but it had space for each of the [union] presidents? signatures?? Frazer told us.

Interestingly, though, they told our newspaper that the Government had conveyed to them that after the Cabinet had met and had decided on the terms of its agreement with the unions, the Prime Minister had signed his copy of the agreement, as a show of good faith, but they had been presented with an unsigned copy, that had spaces for only union executives to sign.

We raised the question, then: how would that have been a true agreement with signatures of only one party?

Frazer told our newspaper that he did not believe that the agreement presented to the unions on February 3 would have been the final agreement, since it was the Government, he claimed, that actually drew up the document?then having only 7 points?and presented it to the unions. Of course, this came after days of talks with the unions on what was to be included in the agreement.

According to Frazer, the BNTU?s Council of Management voted the Thursday afternoon of February 3. He said that they had agreed, in principle, that Government had complied with three basic issues?the reform, the taxes, and the salary increases?but had not yet signed any document.

?The vote was taken about 1:00 p.m. [that day], after Minister Shoman and Dr. Barnett had left the room,? said Frazer. ?That was after it was presented to the TUC, not the BNTU Council, but the Council was present.?

Frazer continued: ?The Cabinet Secretary had called while BNTU Council was in conference. The Cab Sec said, ?Mr. Frazer, this is Robert Leslie. Minister Shoman is on his way?to Belize City with the Government?s response, but doesn?t know where to take the response, because he got calls from different people telling him to take it to the PSU [Public Service Union] on Kut Avenue; another said, ?Take to TUC office.? I said, ?Bring it to the BNTU, because other documents were delivered to me [the TUC?s general secretary] at TUC or BNTU.? Since they [TUC officials] were there [at the BNTU], I said, ?Bring it here.??

Frazer said that he had first called the TUC office; he called Belize Water Services Workers Union president, Russell Young; PSU president, Dylan Reneau; Belize Communication Workers Union, Paul Perriott; and Fire Chief Henry Baizar, president of the Association of Senior Public Service Managers, and so they had come in.

?Just before 12 o?clock, Dr. Barnett and Minister Shoman came, one after the other. We had Mr. [Frankie] Rhys and some of the new people from [BNTU] Belize City branch who had formed part of the BNTU PR committee, to disseminate information to the branches and members, downstairs. We had a couple of TUC presidents there.

?Barnett and Shoman came up. I said, ?All the TUC presidents are not here. I would like you to wait in the lobby or come and join us in the conference room,? where the a/c was. We had already suspended our [BNTU] Council meeting so that they [Shoman/Barnett] could make the presentation [of GOB?s response] to TUC. I didn?t know when we were going to get this document.?

Frazer said that he made 8 copies of the document to give to the TUC people who were there. He listed among them: Young, Perriott, Baizar, Fuentes, Reneau, and James McFoy, the general secretary of the Christian Workers Union.

?No [BNTU] vote was taken yet,? he said.

The document on the request for a special convention also referred to ?the vote being taken publicly, with undue influence, with misrepresentations, undue influence, and inequality of bargaining power, in the presence of GOB?s negotiators.?

?That?s a lie,? Frazer said. ?Shoman and Barnett excused themselves. This was after the document was presented to TUC. Shoman asked if we had questions or clarifications and they [GOB reps] replied to queries. Some of the other TUC presidents went outside, like Dr. Barnett and Shoman. Then, the BNTU said it would vote to see if the three points [they had demanded from GOB] were met.?

According to Fuentes and Frazer, even though their Council of Management, made up of branch representatives, had voted to accept GOB?s proposals, the president did not sign the document as, ?When the time would come to sign, the president would be given the go-ahead to sign for the BNTU? We were not going to sign any document yet.?

They also told us that other union executives under the TUC also said that they needed to get legal advice; reportedly, it was after this that the two advisors – Lois Young, attorney, and Glen Ysaguirre of the Atlantic Bank, lent their advice to the unions in moving from the 7-point agreement received on Thursday, February 3, to the 11-point agreement signed on Friday, February 11.

The Government side said that they could only give the unions until 5:00 p.m. to decide on the proposals, and they had been given only three to four hours to decide, Frazer said.

He also told us that to his understanding, the fine print of the formal agreement would have been agreed to later, but GOB apparently wanted them to sign the 7-point agreement by 5:00 p.m.

?The Government people drew up the text of the agreement after a Cabinet meeting. How would we be so na?ve and foolish to sign?? Frazer said.

With respect to claims by some people that the only thing the BNTU cared about was getting their salary increase, Frazer said that is not true, since all of the BNTU?s press releases on the issues in question also stressed the need for reform, while affirming that they would not support the new taxes in GOB?s budget if GOB did not commit to implementing the needed reforms to improve the management of public funds.

Frazer and Fuentes said that neither of them voted, and so they were not the ones who decided on the proposals or whether or not teachers should return to school. The people who made the decision, they said, were the representatives of the various branches.