ALL’s well that ends welL at the Arawak Cement Company.
That’s at least for the more than fifty general workers who are back on the job after getting the assurance that they would be given retroactive pay, apparently going back as far as 2002, with individual quotes varying from about $500 to $5 000.
Yesterday, the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) and the St Lucy-based company reached an agreement that would see the staffers getting the first tranche of the “back money” from tomorrow.
An informed source from the BWU said the two sides had always enjoyed cordial relations and had planned to maintain them.
Protest action
The mood at the Arawak Cement Company yesterday contrasted sharply with last Tuesday’s when dozens of workers staged protest action, clamouring that they had been given promises of payment since August 2010.
Some of the disgruntled workers indicated that they voted to stop work after a 20-minute meeting was held with management at 7 a.m. last Tuesday, ending with management’s allegedly stating that there were financial challenges delaying the promised payment.
Last year, large numbers of workers from Arawak were laid off for 90 days with some of them claiming that they were promised to be paid their retroactive money by December 31.
According to those workers, they had reached the end of the rope when they went to the meeting last Tuesday to be given what they considered to be more promises. (MK)
