THOUSANDS OF workers took to the streets of Bridgetown yesterday in a tangible show of force against recent retrenchment exercises by a number of Government departments and statutory bodies.
“This is like a Martin Luther King march against the oppression of the people,” declared acting general secretary of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW), Roslyn Smith.
Marshalled by NUPW president Akanni McDowall, Smith and her counterpart in the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), Toni Moore, about 5 000 workers from the Sanitation Services Authority, Probation Department, National Conservation Commission, National Assistance Board and the Barbados Port Inc., as well as other departments, held their placards aloft as they chanted songs of solidarity and catch phrases like ‘No retreat, no surrender’, in their march from Queen’s Park, to the Barbados Investment and Development Corporation (BIDC) – the centre of the dispute where nearly a dozen workers 60 and over were recently sent on early retirement – and then on to NUPW headquarters in Dalkeith.
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