BRA workers, raising UWU banner, strike over promotions

everal Barbados Revenue Authority (BRA) employees walked off the job on Wednesday at their Warrens Tower II offices claiming persistent challenges at the government’s tax collector, including a promotion process they denounced as unjust.

The strike was called by the Unity Workers Union, whose general secretary, Caswell Franklyn, told reporters the BRA has refused the UWU’s repeated bids for recognition.

“The Barbados Revenue Authority refuses to acknowledge that Unity Workers Union is the most representative union at BRA,” Franklyn declared. “For whatever reason they prefer to have NUPW and BWU to deal with. BRA is now disobeying their own rule. They specify that BRA will recognise whoever the workers bring and we’ve written to them to that effect. They acknowledged it, [and] said they would get back to us by the end of the week. The end of the week now is a couple of months so they are not serious.”

The industrial action which started some months ago was first triggered by several concerns around promotions at BRA.

The UWU leader said: “We have a lot of issues that we need to deal with… they don’t want to deal with these issues so they are pretending not to recognise us. We are not going to stand for it. While they are pussyfooting around, the management there are bringing in a lot of people and putting them over the current staff. They are getting senior posts and then asking [the employees] to train them. If I can train people to do a job, I should be able to do that job. So why are you recruiting people who do not know the work?”

“This [industrial action] will continue. We’ve written to the authority to let them know that we are taking industrial action, and it will continue until such time as matters are resolved.” (SB)