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Wrong Move, NUPW Should Pay Striking Workers

Anything that is going to negatively affect this country and further push it into the mire, whether it be the government, unions, outside forces or our very own masses, I will speak out against these or any atrocious acts as it is my duty as a Barbadian to enlighten the masses of such damaging acts.…

Submitted by Wayne Cadogan
Submitted by Wayne Cadogan

Anything that is going to negatively affect this country and further push it into the mire, whether it be the government, unions, outside forces or our very own masses, I will speak out against these or any atrocious acts as it is my duty as a Barbadian to enlighten the masses of such damaging acts.

[…]

The NUPW in this case is wrong in stating that the striking Sanitation Workers should be paid for their time off from work. It is the union that called the workers to strike and therefore, they are the ones that should be paying the workers for the time off that they did not work.

There are two issues which are wrong here, one is that the striking workers should not have been on the compound during the strike as it was a union strike initiated by the union and not the business, and secondly, it is the union that should be paying the workers for the time spent off from work during the strike.

The country had to suffer the indignity of not having their garbage collected during the strike, no fault of theirs and therefore should not as taxpayers have to pay the striking workers salaries. The union should be in a position, that if it is going to call its members to go on strike, that they should be in a position to pay the strikers salaries as that is what part of their union dues is supposed to cover. It is grossly unfair for the taxpayers not to have their garbage collected and have to pay the striking workers too.

212 responses to “Wrong Move, NUPW Should Pay Striking Workers”

  1. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Dragon
    Not giving Customs any free passes….
    But there is always a bigger picture, and one has to be FAIR when making these blanket assessments.
    Everything is relative.

  2. St George's Dragon Avatar
    St George’s Dragon

    This looks as though it could be the basis of the Customs report:
    http://www.ferdi.fr/sites/www.ferdi.fr/files/evenements/presentations/2014_06_12_ferdi_performance_tax_presentation_fanta.pptx
    Not sure I understand how you get a 0. Does that mean Customs don’t have a process in place for the issue being scored? Anyone understand this?

  3. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    The results of the report do not seem credible to me.

    Over the years I have shipped many items to Barbados. I used a Customs broker to clear the items through customs.
    They ranged in value from about $1000 up to $20,000

    I never had a problem or unreasonable delay.

    I have shipped by Fedex, Air Canada, BA and a couple times by Ocean.

  4. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    PERHAPS it simply means that those required to provide necessary feedback did not give two wuk-ups about the survey or the results …and probably were highly SUSPICIOUS of the motives behind the damn exercise in the first place.
    Management is complex.
    Good motives alone DO NOT CUT IT.
    Things like trust, transparency, openness, KEEPING ONE’s WORD, and CARING…
    ..counts a DAMN LOT.

  5. Prodigal Son Avatar
    Prodigal Son

    This report may not be a true reflection of the Customs.

    I mentioned that a friend of mine who worked in a government department which has gone into the BRA told me that the people in the particular department were upset that the government brought white people in there who had no idea what was going on to interview them.

    The person said it was clear that the so called consultants knew nothing of what was the department’s mission or goals, nothing of what they did daily so they took offense and decided among themselves not to cooperate. Why would they cooperate with white people for in the end for people to lose their own jobs. The workers decided to hold on to their knowledge…………..saying “they dont know and we aint telling them what we know”.

    So maybe, just maybe the Customs officers played hardball. We Barbadians seem to think that once these so called consultants come from overseas that they possess knowledge that we do not have.

    The government brought in consultants from the UK to review the BTA and look what the idiots accepted……..splitting one agency into two to produce the same result………….does that make sense to anyone. I wonder if the government has paid the consultant yet as for a long time the person remained unpaid!

  6. are-we-there-yet Avatar
    are-we-there-yet

    St George’s Dragon;

    That looks as if it could be the kind of assessment tool that could have been used. The fact that it was designed in collaboration with most of the International agencies that were responsible for the Barbados assessment almost nails it.

    I would have to go through the tool more carefully but offhand I think that such a tool, administered by novices with little or no familiarity with local culture and one using minimal dedicated computerised systems and one where staff might be totally against being tested with the tool by foreigners, could yield the kind of results that the Nation article highlighted. Results that would not really reflect the degree of competence of the Department being tested.

    This might explain why the report was apparently put away and might also explain the need for a further testing to have been done, hopefully with better buy-in by the testees and management and with greater use of available technology and by people who really understand the limitations of such tools and factor in such limitations in their conclusions.

  7. David Avatar
    David

    It is difficult to imagine the government and management of the Customs Department would have accepted the final report of participation by workers were thought to be passive therefore leading to distortion of results.

  8. are-we-there-yet Avatar
    are-we-there-yet

    David;

    The leaking of the report suggests that it was accepted otherwise it is difficult to accept the degree of duplicity that would have been involved in the leaking of a report that had not been accepted.

    But these days, who knows?

  9. NationBLPnewspaper Avatar
    NationBLPnewspaper

    Why do the the partisans on the blog seem to find it hard to believe that our customs department has not been seen in the best light by independent assessors? We all know that for years SOME customs officers have become richer than any other public officers and we all know why.

    The real disgrace in the Nation BLP newspaper on Sunday was when Sanka Price (surprise, surprise) does an article telling PM Stuart that he was wrong on recent statements about the law and retiring public officers. But Sanka did not have the journalistic integrity to tell the country the BLP attorney who wrote the article instead referring to an “anonymous legal expert”.
    How much lower will the Nation allow itself to sink into the journalistic cesspool?

    As David said earlier “How effective is our media and the extent it allows itself to be manipulated.”

  10. Artaxerxes Avatar
    Artaxerxes

    NationBLPnewspaper July 28, 2015 at 1:02 AM #

    “But Sanka did not have the journalistic integrity to tell the country the BLP attorney who wrote the article instead referring to an “anonymous legal expert”….”

    I was told that the “anonymous legal expert” was Kenny Best. After all, he’s a bit disgruntled because ALL the other losing candidates getting free money and no room could be found for him.

    Esther is minister of labour; Patrick Todd, Harry Husbands and two time losers, Irene Sandiford-Garner and Jeptar Ince are senators/parliamentary secretaries; Haynesley Benn is Consul General at Toronto; Verla seems to be CBC’s legal analyst; and George Hudson is a member of NLICO’s board.

  11. are-we-there-yet Avatar
    are-we-there-yet

    The striking customs officers believe the report was strategically leaked
    http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/70399/-smear-job

  12. NationBLPnewspaper Avatar
    NationBLPnewspaper

    @Artaxerses – Instead of holding the Nation BLP newspaper’s feet to the fire and call a spade a spade you engage in the politics of distraction because the Nation newspaper’s lowering of standards cannot be defended.

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