AVERTING STRIKE ACTION at the state-owned Transport Board is now in Prime Minister Freundel Stuart’s hands.
Yesterday evening at Solidarity House, the executive council of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) voted in an emergency session for general secretary Sir Roy Trotman to seek a meeting with Stuart to try to bring the Transport Board’s management back to the bargaining table to discuss “enhanced” severance packages for workers there who are to lose their jobs.
Sir Roy insisted that the union received a commitment from the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler in January that enhanced packages were “found to be attractive” and could be negotiated.
Sir Roy charged that either Government “has not authorised, and if it has authorised it, the [Transport] Board is not negotiating along the lines of the commitments that were made in discussions we held with the Minister of Finance and with the Prime Minister in January”.
The development came as the cash-strapped Transport Board on Friday started sending home workers as part of the plan to cut 250 people from its payroll.
