THE NATIONAL UNION of Public Workers (NUPW) is poised to hash out serious matters with the Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) today.
NUPW president Akanni McDowall said this meeting would address overtime and any other matters.
“The union has already indicated we would be representing the workers vehemently on any issue they see fit. We are hoping to discuss the issues extensively as both the workers and management of SSA and all parties involved would be happy with outcome,” he said yesterday at the NUPW’s Dalkeith, St Michael headquarters.
Currently, the SSA work week runs from Monday to Friday with overtime on weekends. However, Government is seeking to end overtime and make the work week any five days, but workers are opposed to this move.
After a meeting with the Minister of Labour Colin Jordan last year, it was agreed a special arrangement would be in place for final three weekends in December, then the meeting would take place.
McDowall was speaking after the NUPW hosted a meeting for disgruntled public service vehicle (PSV) operators who parked their buses for several hours yesterday, leaving some commuters stranded.
In the wide-ranging interview, he spoke about the way in which Government handled the retrenchment process under the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme. He said job losses were never easy, but having discussed it at the level of the Social Partnership, they understood why they had to occur.
“It is our responsibility to represent workers, not only through salary increases, appointments and such like, but also to make sure that the entire worker is taken care of,” McDowall said.
“The union has expressed some concern about the way in which those workers were retrenched. It was a way that we were very displeased with.”
He said they told “the powers that be” the union had to be involved in the process going forward.
The president said they would also be looking to see if workers were doing multiple tasks for which they were not being paid.
Meanwhile, he said the NUPW had opened its home to the PSV operators to air their concerns.
McDowall said while he did not want to trivialise the issues, some of them should not persist today, but they were “genuine concerns” which had to be addressed. (SAT)
