One of Belize’s leading banana farms, the prominent Maya King Ltd. in south Stann Creek, owned by John Zabaneh, was slapped with a hefty and unprecedented $420,000 judgment today, when Supreme Court Judge Sam Lungole Awich ruled that the enterprise illegally terminated six laborers back in June 2001, because they were leading a recruitment drive for the Christian Workers Union.
In commenting on the landmark industrial relations case, Awich said in court that the Maya King terminations were “undoubtedly union busting”—dismissals that were aimed at silencing union members, he added.
Explaining his judgment in court today, Justice Awich said that the terminations of Jose Luis Reyes, Oscar Orlando Maradiaga, Julio Carceres Hernandez, Cornelio Rubio Gutierrez, Emelina Bautista Rivera and Rigoberto Maldonado violated both the Belize Constitution and the Belize Trade Unions and Employers’ Organizations Act, which were put into force, he said, to protect workers from unfair terminations because of union activities.
He said that because the workers have no interest in being reinstated at the banana farm, he would award them $70,000 each as compensation, with a 6% interest rate tagged on as of today until it is paid. Awich also awarded costs of court to the 6 workers.
President of the National Trade Union Congress of Belize (NTUCB), Dylan Reneau, hailed the victory as an important one for unions in Belize.
“It goes to show you that you have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get justice,” said Reneau. “Although it is there written in the laws [that workers’ rights to unionize is sacred] employers don’t respect that.”
Reneau lauded the former Maya King workers for “taking such a bold stance in going to court.”
Amandala was unable to reach CWU executives after this afternoon’s ruling for comment.
During the hearings, Maya King’s attorney, V. H. Courtenay, SC, of the W.H. Courtenay law firm, claimed that Maya King had only terminated the men as part of a downsizing exercise to cut costs in the face of rough financial times, and they only did it to ensure that they run their business profitably. Maya King had not dismissed the applicants because of union activity, Courtenay had contended.
However, in presenting his judgment today, Awich said that he could not accept that defense because the workers had been terminated only a few days after May 27, 2001—the date they had initiated the recruitment drive for the CWU. All six men had leadership roles in the recruitment exercise and after the men were dismissed, the drive was quashed, he observed.
He also said that one would have expected employees to know well in advance of their terminations, had it been part of a downsizing operation; instead, they learned of their terminations the same day they were being let go, and the news first came to them, he recounted, by word-of-mouth.
Attorney for the banana workers, Antoinette Moore, had contended that the terminations were discriminatory or illegal, and she had succeeded back in 2001 to block a move by the company to evict the workers from homes they had occupied on Maya King Farm by getting a temporary court injunction.
None of those workers were in court today; neither was anyone for Maya King, except for a legal representative.
Moore told Amandala this evening that the 6 workers, originating from Guatemala and Honduras, are still living in Belize: one of them in Cayo and the others in Stann Creek. However, just after they had won the injunction against the Zabaneh farm, then Minister of Immigration at the time, Maxwell Samuels, expelled the 6 men from the country.
Moore said that the union responded by bringing pressure on the government, saying the move was illegal because three had Belizean nationality and the others were legal residents, and the then Prime Minister, Said Musa, reversed their deportation and settled the matter by providing what Moore describes as “minimal compensation.”
Justice Awich used the case of former Catholic school teacher Maria Roches as a benchmark for deciding what he would award the workers for what he termed to be a denial of their fundamental constitutional right. He said that Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh had awarded Roches $150,000, but when the Catholic management appealed the case, the Court of Appeals later reduced her award to $60,000. He said that he has decided on the figure of $70,000 for the banana workers given the time that had elapsed—eight years—and also to send a clear message that employers cannot breach the rights of workers with impunity.
The key clause of the Belize Constitution that was invoked in the case was Section 13, which says, in part, that “Except with his own consent, a person shall not be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of assembly and association, that is to say, his right to assemble freely and associate with other persons and in particular to form or belong to trade unions or other associations for the protection of his interests or to form or belong to political parties or other political associations…”
Awich made reference to both local and international law, citing, apart from the Belize Constitution and labor laws, International Labor Organization Conventions that Belize had ratified.
Amandala tried to reach Maya King owner John Zabaneh for comment, but our efforts were to no avail.
Maya King manager Antonio Almandarez said he could not comment because he did not know enough about the case, as it had happened before his time there.
Reneau projected that Maya King would, just as the Catholic management did with the Maria Roches case, appeal Awich’s ruling and try to have the judgment reduced.