56 Terminal Workers Face Employment Decision as National Bus Company Transition Advances

The Ministry of Transport is moving ahead with new legislation that will address the employment of workers attached to the Terminal Management Unit. Yesterday, a mandatory meeting was held in Belmopan between the Ministry of Transport and the Terminal Management Unit, as government continues the transition to the National Bus Company. Fifty-six terminal workers are now considering their next career steps, after being given the option to join the National Bus Company or seek reemployment with the Government of Belize. The issue follows months of discussions over the future of terminal workers as the National Bus Company transition got underway. Earlier this year, the Ministry explained that workers would have options as the transition moved forward, including the opportunity to apply for positions with the National Bus Company. Now, the process has reached another stage, with the affected workers being formally presented with their options. CEO in the Ministry of Transport, Chester Williams, gave us a breakdown of what is to come for the workers and spoke about yesterday’s meeting.

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Transport: “I must say first and foremost thanks to Mr Dean Flowers for coming to join us for this very important meeting. As you would know that we are still in the transition period for the National Bus Company moving from the Department of Transport Terminal Unit to the Department of Transport and so as a part of the transitional period what we are doing is to meet with the workers of the terminal unit, explain to them what are the options available to them, explain to them what are their legal entitlements should they choose whatever options, as well as to give the union as a bargaining agent that opportunity to speak to and hear from them. And so that’s what we did today and I believe that the meeting went quite well. The input from the President of the Union was very important. Likewise from the Labor Commissioner’s Office again looking from the labor perspective and we also had representatives from the Ministry of Finance. So essentially we just want to make sure we cover every grounds and the most important thing here is to make sure that the workers should they decide on whatever options that they get what is legally entitled to them by law. Legislation has a provision that says that the employees who are currently employed within the terminal unit of the Department of Transport will have two options. One, to apply for employment with the National Bus Company or two, to apply for re-employment with the Government of Belize and so long as they are so qualified and meet the criteria for whatever position they apply for at either NBC or the Government of Belize that they’ll be given first preference for the employment. So there’s going to be a provision there again to protect the current employees of the terminal unit within the Department of Transport.”

Reporter: And we received reports that multiple people will be terminated. Is that true?

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Transport: “We have not come to that as yet. We are still going to await the union meeting with them separately and see what proposal they can come up with that they may want to present government and then following their proposal then we can see how we proceed from there.”

Reporter: What would be the reason for their termination? 

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Transport: “Well basically what we’re saying is that the position that the currently holds within the Government of Belize or within the government service has become redundant and the law does provide for redundancy and how you deal with redundancy so we want to make sure that we follow the law where that is concerned.”

The Ministry also invited Public Service Union President Dean Flowers to be part of the discussions. Flowers says he was satisfied with the outcome of the meeting and with the participation of the workers in attendance.

Dean Flowers, President, PSU: “The Public Service Union was here today by way of invitation from the Department of Transport, more specifically by the CEO in the Ministry of Transport. The meeting was held to meet with the staff, I believe it’s about 56 staff from across the country who were brought into Balmopan to engage with them, to hear what their concerns are, what their fears are, and also it provided an opportunity for the Ministry to explain to them what is the proposed changes that they can anticipate and how those changes impact on their terms and conditions of service as well as on the establishment of the National Bus Company. Clearly, there will need to be the passage of certain legislations and those legislation will impact on them. Very much satisfied with the outcome. I think I am very much satisfied because I got the opportunity of course to interact with public officers, public officers that we negotiate and bargain for as the Public Service Union. And what I saw today is a group of public officers who really and truly enjoy and love what they do. Can they be better? Can they do better? Of course they can. We all can be better and do better in whatever we do but that comes with certain, certain initiatives on behalf of the public officer as well as management has to do their part in terms of the building of capacity of those public officers. But all in all I enjoyed the interaction, I enjoyed the feedback. I think they were very responsive to their fears, they were very responsive in explaining what their questions were. And overall I think we have a good cadre of people here they simply need of course the more training and more guidance and more supervision in doing their work. And then I’m pretty quite sure we can provide a better product for the Belizean people.”

The new legislation is currently being advanced to the House of Representatives, where it will go through the parliamentary process.