Already disheartened by the fact that many of their union colleagues did not show up for the National Trade Union Congress protest on Friday, March 16, 2007, in Belmopan, teachers in the public school system got more bad news on Tuesday when the Ministry of Education issued a memo, stamped “URGENT,” declaring that teachers who were absent on the day of the protest will be docked a day’s pay effective April 27, 2007.
Issued by chief education officer, Maud Hyde, the memo says that Friday was no holiday, and, “The Ministry has subsequently approved that deductions be made from the salaries of those principals and teachers who absented themselves from the classroom without authorization.” The memo goes on to cite the Education Rules.
The correspondence, addressed to general managers, local managers, and principals of secondary schools, goes further to instruct them to send the Ministry a copy of the names of those persons from whom deductions are made and the amounts deducted from their salaries.
The pay sheets have already been prepared for this month and so the so-called “urgent” memo could not be implemented until the next pay period.
Hyde’s orders to dock teachers’ pay has angered the Belize National Teachers’ Union (BNTU), which had called out their members to participate in Friday’s protest.
BNTU President, Anthony Fuentes, said that the same Minister of Education, Hon. Francis Fonseca, is also the Minister of Labor, who is supposed to be fighting to protect the rights of workers.
On March 5, 2007, that same Ministry of Labor condemned Belize Telecommunications Limited for allegedly acting in bad faith when the company fired Mrs. Christine Perriott, General Secretary of the Belize Communication Workers’ Union, in the midst of a trade dispute between the union and the company.
“The history of unionism in Belize has been a long and glorious one, but we must remain vigilant in our efforts to protect the rights of workers and trade unions,” the Minister of Labor had said in that release to the press.
But Fuentes contends that it is the Ministry of Education, headed by that same Minister, which is now employing anti-union tactics, of which BTL has been accused. Fuentes and BNTU General Secretary, George Frazer, both interpret the memo as a form of intimidation and punishment of teachers for standing up for what they believe in, but Fuentes goes further to say that the Government is retaliating for the stance that the union took on the Primary School Examination (PSE) two weeks ago.
After the Ministry of Education made public the scores of the primary school teachers on the PSE—some of which were below acceptable levels—the BNTU protested, saying that the announcement of the scores caught them by surprise and embarrassed and demoralized teachers. It furthermore called on teachers to boycott the invigilating and the marking of the PSE.
Fuentes said that the union won’t take this one lying down, but when we asked him what they will do about the matter, he said that he could not specify, since any measures would have to be decided by the BNTU’s Council of Management, made up of two representatives of each of their 10 branches.
So will the schools carry out the demand of the Ministry of Education to dock teachers’ pay if they were absent last Friday? Clement Wade—who heads Catholic public schools, which account for the majority of denominational schools—says they must, because under law, they have to follow the Ministry’s directive. He said that Government pays 100% of salaries for primary school teachers and 70% for high school teachers.
While Fuentes said that the Association of General Managers of Primary Schools had agreed in 2005, when it was chaired by Wade, to give teachers at least a day off in the first instance to participate in industrial action for a just cause, Wade said that he does not recollect any such agreement.
He said that managers have the discretion to give teachers up to three days leave if they can see the reason for their gripes, but in this case, said Wade, a letter was sent late to him from the NTUCB requesting leave for teachers, and not by the BNTU. He, evidently, did not take that letter seriously because, according to Wade, he found it peculiar that Frazer, as the assistant secretary general, would have been the one signing a letter that was so significant.
Frazer remembers that the last time Government ordered a pay cut for teachers participating in protest actions was in 2005. One such instance was in April 2005, when both teachers and public officers got a day’s pay cut for absenting themselves from work for strike action.
Last week, in the days leading up to the protest, our newspaper asked union leaders about this issue, and whether the unions would be able to reimburse teachers and other union members if they were to suffer a loss of pay for responding to the NTUCB’s call to protest in Belmopan. The reply we got was that the NTUCB was hoping that those going to protest would be willing to make that sacrifice of a day’s pay for a greater cause.
The Catholic school management had already warned teachers, in response to the letter Frazer had sent requesting a day off, that teachers were not being allowed the day off and their pay would be cut if they were to participate in the protest.