BELIZE CITY, Wed. Mar. 2, 2022– The $1.5 million ex-gratia payment which was to be disbursed on Monday, February 28, to the stevedores of the Christian Workers Union (CWU) was interrupted by an urgent injunction filed at the eleventh hour by the attorneys of the Port of Belize Ltd.. On Monday, Justice Lisa Shoman granted an interim injunction which froze the account for a period of 15 days, until March 16 at 5:00 p.m. The case is scheduled to be heard on that day, but this past Monday was the day the stevedores had a reasonable expectation to receive the payment. The principals of the union had been engaged in an intensive process over the past week and over the weekend to put everything in place to facilitate the payment on the date set out in the Memorandum of Association signed with the Government of Belize: February 28. The president of the CWU, Evan “Mose” Hyde, had even indicated in a press briefing two weeks ago, when he was responding to local reporters’ questions about the agreement with GoB, that every effort was being made to put all the processes in place to ensure transparency and accountability in the disbursement process and to ensure that all documentation would be in place to indicate which persons had received those funds — in line with a commitment they had made to GoB. During the hearing on Monday, however, attorneys for PBL posited to the court that the CWU’s continuation of its efforts to issue payment to the stevedores was disrespectful — and the sitting Justice, Lisa Shoman, who, coincidenally, was closely affiliated with the PUP administration under which the privatization of PBL took place— appeared to concur.
However, what the attorney representing the CWU, Darrell Bradley, pointed out in a press briefing on Tuesday is that it is in fact the PBL’s “urgent” injunction — filed several weeks after a well-publicized agreement with GoB was put into place and after a disbursement effort was set into motion — that was actually an act of disrespect.
“What I think is disrespectful is the fact that this was all done in public, so that the fact of the negotiations between the CWU, the government of Belize, and the Port Authority, that began in January of this year, if you look at the affidavits filed by the claimant, it tracks the fact that they knew that these negotiations were happening from January.” Bradley noted..
The affidavit of Arturo Vasquez, in the original notice of the interim injunction, confirmed that they had knowledge of the negotiations between the government of Belize and the stevedores since January 26, and also of the MOU entered into by the CWU and Port Authority on February 3, granting them 1.5 million payment to be paid “on or before the 28th of February 2022.”
In reference to what had been taking place since the signing of that MOU, Bradley stated, “Since then, the entities have been meeting, they have been working out the logistics and so forth, and on Friday, there would have been an urgent injunction in relation to stopping the payment. Now when you use the court processes for urgency, that’s because something is happening when you had no opportunity to act. When you are saying that something is urgent, you are saying that people are trying to do something behind closed doors, but that is furthest from the truth. These things were public; these things were done with press conferences and in the plain view of every single member of the public…”
Bradley, in addition to pointing to what appeared to be a bad-faith move of an entity that knew for weeks of the payment process that had been set into motion but chose to file an “urgent” injunction at the “last minute” (as part of an effort which bears some semblance to a legal ambush), also mentioned that the CWU and its attorneys did not receive notice of the document, which was needed for them to prepare for the hearing until Saturday. This, Bradley said, was an act of disrespect. He said that at that very late juncture, they proceeded to work on preparing the affidavits for the hearing, which was scheduled for Monday.
“The only reason that is the case is because we received the documents involving our clients and seeking this injunction on Saturday, so that we had to be struggling to put in place what would be our response and so forth for a hearing that would have been on Monday, for something which they the claimants are saying is urgent, for something that was in the public domain since January and for a memorandum and payment, knowledge of which they had, when the memorandum was signed on the 3 of February 2022. In my view that is disrespectful,” Bradley said.
Bradley went on to state that PBL and its attorneys are attempting to give the impression that some misdeed is taking place in the dark between the CWU and the government of Belize, when, in fact, the agreement and all subsequent processes have taken place openly, with full transparency. PBL and its attorneys have been insisting, however, that the monies paid out to the CWU did not receive the required parliamentary approval. When interviewed by local reporters on Monday, PBL’s attorney Hector Guerra, said that if the requisite parliamentary approval is granted, they would have to “reconsider the matter,” but that they have their own view as to “whether that would cure the misstep that has happened”.
(It is worth noting that PBL, while attempting to portray itself as an advocate of compliance with law and proper procedures, had, up until last week, not complied with the rulings of the government-appointed Essential Services Arbitration Tribunal — even though the stevedores had ended an 8-day strike with the hope that they would. The Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), when expressing disapproval of the stevedores’ industrial action in January, had pointed to this tribunal as the appropriate mechanism for resolving differences between the parties. However, it remains to be seen how this mechanism can effectively address these concerns, in light of what appears, at least at this point, to be PBL’s disregard of that tribunal’s orders.)
Prime Minister John Briceno had informed local media that the payment was made by special warrant and would be approved at the next budget presentation in the National Assembly, and Darrel Bradley also noted that section 114 of the Constitution provides for payments by means of a special warrant, with a period of 90 days without immediate parliamentary approval, which is one of the grounds of the claimant’s case, or so it seems.
The preamble of the Memorandum of Understanding sets out overarching reasoning for the decision to issue payment to the stevedores.
“Whereas the Port of Belize Limited was privatized on or about 18 day of January 2002; And Whereas the Government of Belize recognizes that the Stevedores may have been prejudiced by the said privatization or the Port; And Whereas the Government of Belize, without accepting any liabilities for any prejudices that may have been suffered by the Stevedores, desires to provide the stevedores with an ex-gratia payment to offset any such prejudice that may have arisen,” the MOU signed by the CWU and government states.
While the government itself assumes no liability for any harm to the stevedores that may have been caused by privatization, they do recognize that stevedores “may have been prejudiced by said privatization of the Port”. This assertion seemingly transfers some level of implied culpability to the receivership which oversees the Port of Belize, a major service provider that has been operating with a transitional management team for 20 years, and which has been in a volatile relationship with its workers over the past two decades.
The effort of the CWU to provide some relief for their aggrieved members has been interrupted by their employer in a manner that seems to many Belizeans to be spiteful — and that, in some quarters, is viewed as an effort to cause economic pain to the stevedores, some of whom have been physically injured while on the job. The president of CWU, Evan “Mose” Hyde, told local media that the stevedores had a reasonable expectation that they would be receiving payment on the date designated by the memorandum of understanding they signed with the government, since they fully complied with the requests within the MOU.
For now, since that process has been stalled, the union is unable to access its online account to check its account balance to determine what amount has been withdrawn, and many stevedores, unable to access funds from local banks — particularly the bank associated with the entity which controls PBL — have had to pay incredibly high fees to third party agencies to cash their checks. And it in fact appears that the union is in fact unable to access any of its funds — even those funds completely unrelated to GoB’s disbursal and which are needed to pay the union’s expenses.
“Our advice to our members today is that they need to remove their accounts from those institutions that are related to the employer forthwith. If they have any loan arrangement, of course, they have to keep with those, but you cannot do business with people who have acted this way to you. Because ultimately that is what we have, the situation that we are faced with is that unfortunately people who have deposited their checks to various financial institutions are now being told that they are unable to get any access to their funds, that’s going on. But it’s even broader than that; what happens at CWU, is we have independent financial institutions not honoring our check, which is not related to the account in question, not even the same bank.” Hyde said..
He went on to state, “But it just shows the end product of a very ….unkind, I’m trying to be pleasant… very unkind intentions from the employer to do its best to make things as messy, to make things as hard, to make things as unpleasant as they have become, and we have to put that on the record. “
Attorney Bradley said that the injunction, to which there might have been an excessive reaction by local banks, only legally restrains the CWU from paying the stevedores for a period of 15 days, but any monies paid out by check or otherwise are not frozen by the interim order.
“We just want to be very clear in relation to what the order speaks about. The order speaks about the payment of the fund and the order specifies the $1.5 million, and what the order does is temporarily for a period of 15 days, what the order does is it restrains the CWU and its officers, president, general secretary from making the payment to the members, so if the payment has already been made previous to the granting of the injunction, that can’t be caught by the order,” Bradley said.
Concerning the difficulties being faced with the other domestic bank accounts, he said, “Just by way of the court order, the court order only deals with a particular sum of money which was paid into a particular account, so this doesn’t deal with any other account or any other monies. It’s a particular thing, and what it does is that there is no holding of that; what it does it prevents me, from your, those proceeds, but every other thing is not caught by the injunction.” Bradley explained.