Former employees of BTL to receive severance as ordered by the CCJ

A long-standing dispute between Belize Telemedia Limited and former employees moved toward resolution this evening following a three-hour meeting held at the Labour Department on Queen Street in Belize City.  Labour representatives, BTL officials and members of the Belize Communications Workers Justice group, BCWJ, met this afternoon to finalize discussions surrounding severance payments owed to former workers under an order of the Caribbean Court of Justice. The meeting concluded shortly after five o’clock.  The breakthrough follows correspondence sent on behalf of BTL indicating that the company’s Board of Directors approved payments to former employees whose employment ended more than six years ago, notwithstanding provisions of the Limitation Act. BTL had also mandated Chief Financial Officer Ian Cleverly and Chief Human Resources Officer Kendra Santos to meet with the union to finalize the terms of payment, with senior Labour Officers Rudy Ake and Jesus Yam attending as observers.  After the meeting, BCWJ spokesperson Emily Turner told the media the discussions were successful and conducted in a cordial manner.  Turner noted that some administrative challenges remain, particularly incomplete employment records for certain workers, but says BTL has committed to assisting the group in locating and verifying the missing information.  

Emily Turner, BCWJ Spokesperson: “We’ve arrived at BTL who has agreed to pay the severance. We do have now we are discussing the interest payment that would be done and on both sides we have to take it back to our groups and we will be discussing those figures. We are expecting something to come back to us from BTL by Thursday and then we are supposed to take back something to our members over the weekend and then we intend to meet next week. Our intention is to try to close this off in the next two weeks I think for the most it would be about two weeks but it was a very good meeting. A lot of the discussion was around the data that we have available since 1994. There are some, there’s a gap of information that is not available digitally from 1994 to 2005 which we will have to examine along with BTL to be able to determine what were the circumstances of those employees. So we did have a very good, fruitful meeting in terms of collaboration in exchange of information. We have some information, they have some information that they will share with us so that we can look at some of that data that we have a gap with. The systems that we have digitalized since 2005 to 2025, that data is now in the systems, those data can be validated. So that’s not the challenge.”

She also revealed that the number of beneficiaries is larger than originally anticipated.  According to Turner, more than five hundred former employees are now expected to receive severance payments, exceeding the number initially compiled by the organization.

Emily Turner, BCWJ Spokesperson: “One of the things that BTL came with and we want to give and want to applaud them for that. They have included all the employees. The number they gave us is 564. Even people that are not included in our group that we’re representing will be paid. So they have already looked at the severance amount for those people. So we will, obviously we only have the data for the people that are working with our group, but BTL has committed that even the people that are not part of any group, they will be reaching out to those people to make this payment to them because they want to settle this, they want to settle it with all the employees that then worked at BTL within the years from 1994 up to 2025 when they were not paying severance.”