BELIZE CITY, Mon. Jan. 31, 2022– On Friday the stevedores at the Port of Belize Ltd. who are members of the Christian Workers Union (CWU) returned to work following the rulings handed down to the parties by the Essential Services Arbitration Tribunal (ESAT) on Thursday, January 27. The CWU still has outstanding matters to address with the receivership management at Port of Belize, but the loading and unloading of ships began in good faith on Friday. The stevedores are hoping that the Port of Belize Ltd. will act with similar good faith and comply with the ruling of the tribunal rather than ignoring the tribunal’s order after the stevedores have desisted from the sole strategy they have been able to use to get PBL and GoB to respond to their concerns: industrial action. CWU president Evan “Mose” Hyde told local media that the union was unsure of PBL’s position prior to a meeting scheduled for Thursday afternoon, but in a CWU press release released on Friday morning, the union states, “The CWU hereby respectfully appeals to the Receivership Management at PBL to comply with the ruling and engage with us on the outstanding matters that could be potential stumbling blocks in our relationship.”

The stand taken by the stevedores caused some disruptions in the shipping industry in Belize that was additional to the disruptions caused by the global shipping crisis being experienced worldwide. Various groups from the business community publicly expressed their objections to the delay in unloading of containers as a result of the stevedores’ strike and went to great lengths to outline what they thought would be the effects of the stevedores’ actions. However, the vice president of the Customs Brokers Association of Belize, Delroy Fairweather, has publicly stated that the results of the 8-day strike will be minimal, and any substantial increases in prices seen at the stores CANNOT be attributed to the industrial action at the Port. He told 7News, “The couple days delays that we had … so we had maybe a couple days where we had to work out the logistics, and I could tell you that yes, containers are being trucked at present back to Belize City. So, to say that the country would have ran out of supplies, it could have been maybe something even more dramatic than this 8 days or so. What this actually did was created some delays which I would refer to it as very minimal delays, because now one week later the vessels which came into port that was scheduled to be here this week, so there is not really much it would say that it would have created a situation where the shelves would have been peeled. There are costs to move the containers from what we have worked out. If you would multiply or divide it into the total cost of what’s inside those containers, it really and truly shouldn’t be anything that significant … it wouldn’t make any significant difference in terms of raising the price or anything. If we are moving into the price gouging aspect, if people start seeing maybe a notation in the cost and they are attributing it because goods were coming through Big Creek, I would say no, it would be more on the freight end, because of course we still are dealing with the price of containers at 300%-400% the freight cost at this moment. So the prices should be within the same range, it shouldn’t be any difference of such.”

In light of the previously mentioned public statements made by some high-profile entities that seemed to portray an exaggerated effect of the week-long standoff and appeared to primarily attribute the standstill to the stevedores, rather than the private enterprise that was unwilling to address the concerns of its employees, however, a press release from CWU states, “We call on all the voices who have been so vocal in questioning the legitimacy of our claims and the stand that we have taken, to now join us in appealing to PBL.”

In an interview with Hyde he stated, “Our position that we have been contending is not outrageous, are not unsound, are not unreasonable …”

The rulings of the Essential Services Arbitration Tribunal confirmed that the requests tabled by the CWU on behalf of the stevedores were valid, following its deliberation on the rebuttals submitted by both parties. In a release issued late Thursday evening they outlined:

1. The Port of Belize Limited is directed to forthwith confirm the primary stevedores as Registered Stevedores;

2. The Port of Belize Limited is directed to promote the 28 Secondary Substitutes to Primary Substitutes and invite them to participate in Port of Belize Limited’s insurance scheme as from the 27 January 2022. Further, the Port of Belize Limited is directed to pay their share of contributions to the retirement savings for the 28 stevedores from the 13 July 2021, being the date when the dispute was brought to the attention of the Minister; and

3. That the parties forthwith commence negotiations for payment under the Redundancy Package as agreed between the parties on the 6 March 2020.

A release from the government of Belize added that they would follow the oral ruling handed down with a written document within a few days—something the CWU has been waiting for, in order to receive some assurance that the ruling will be complied with, and will not just be an unfulfilled statement.

 The union’s president said that an oral offer from the government—presumably related to compensation for the loss of their earnings due to the transfer of sugar-loading to the Big Creek Port—was tabled, but they will await a written document before putting any proposal to their membership for a vote.

“My position to our members is my position to the public: if I don’t have something in writing to say that an offer has been made and the condition of the offer, for us it’s as if though the offer has not been made as yet, and in fact, we met with our members to say, ‘listen, because you are our members we will tell you what has been said to us’, but we are not going to vote on it,” Hyde said.

There is no indication so far that the official written ruling from the tribunal has been handed down yet, or if the government has sent a written offer of the proposed compensation to the stevedores for the hardships caused to them by the privatization of the Port and GoB’s involvement in facilitating the transfer of sugar-unloading to Big Creek, in violation of a memorandum signed years ago.

Also, in regard to what is seen as the most pressing matter on the table—the negotiation of the Sugar Redundancy Package, as mentioned the tribunal has ordered PBL to reengage with the CWU, as the company had committed to doing under the March 2020 agreement. Hyde said that members of the union would lose an estimated 30 million dollars in earnings because of the Big Creek transition.

“When we add up everybody that are presently working and what they would have earned in sugar before retirement, 30 million dollars, just in earnings. We’re not talking about the retirement benefits that would be based on those earnings that add up as well; we’re not talking about the years that they have spent doing sugar even before there was a PBL,” Hyde outlined.

For now, the union and its members are hoping to finally end the decades of discord between the PBL and the stevedores, which has been seen by many as primarily the result of what Hyde referred to as a “privatization misadventure”.

“You have so many stakeholders who are completely invested in the stability in this particular place, and then, we are doing this in light of a miscalculated, ill-advised, deformed, adventure called the privatization of the port and it’s like we have been in a circle going round and round and round just encountering the same fundamental deformities and paying a price for it everytime. Nobody wants to be doing that. Right. “ Hyde said.

 He noted that both parties need to come to the table with a spirit of reconciliation.

“We hope that all sides involved will bring good faith to the table. The word we think of right now is are we going to have a conversation based on reconciliation, or is this a conversation about vindictiveness. Is this a conversation about ego, about hubris, who has wealth? Our fundamental mooring is that we want to have a conversation that looks at reconciliation, look at this 20-year, two-decade misadventure, where our members have paid a serious price,” said Hyde.