‘No Moore tears’

Don’t cry, stop the bleeding, former Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Public Workers Derrick Alleyne has said, as he chided Barbados Workers Union’s General Secretary Senator Toni Moore for shedding tears during the BWU annual conference.

Senator Moore cried while delivering her speech to the nation’s oldest trade union’s 78th annual delegates conference, at Solidarity House, last Saturday.

As she wiped away tears, she revealed that it was difficult for her to witness the suffering of people she was committed to serve.

But Alleyne contends that Moore showing her emotional state suggested a lack of maturity in her leadership.

He declared: “If you feeling pain you still got to look strong, even if your belly hurting you. But you know people use different strategies to get results and to get the outcome that they want.

“So, she is probably getting a lot of sympathy now, some people feeling for her. I don’t know what the environment was when she started crying because I wasn’t there. I only saw the little clip that going around on social media.

“But you can’t sow ackees and get dunks you know. What you sow you will reap.

“You took the members down a road and it didn’t work out for them and therefore they have the right to respond.

“Now what you must do now is try to clean up your act before you lose more.”

Alleyne suggested all the nation’s unions were facing serious internal challenges which he believes must be rectified urgently.

The former union boss admonished union board members and executives to get their priorities right, if they want members to renew confidence in them.

Turning his attention to the NUPW, Alleyne said: “I think we need to as a union to sit down and deal with the decisions taken over the last couple of years and try and bring some level of fairness and proper management because the unions are really under pressure.

“You just can’t have people keep resigning and internal conflict, and all that stuff.

“The workers are not going to support it. We need to stop the bleeding; we need to stop the haemorrhaging.”

At a recent edition of the Astor B Watts lunchtime lecture of the Democratic Labour Party, Alleyne said he was concerned that there was now a lack of confidence in the trade union movement and its current leadership, which he blamed on apparent internal struggles. anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb