Workers begin to get outstanding pay

By Ryan Gilkes

The Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) declared victory for unionised staff at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus on Thursday as they ended a strike over promised back pay and increments.

The workers resumed their duties on the understanding that overdue payments of $1 500 for each staff member for the year spanning August 1, 2022, to July 31, 2023, would have been disbursed by the end of the day. 

In a statement issued Thursday evening, BWU General Secretary Toni Moore confirmed the UWI had come through with its promise to pay, as several workers reported payments had been made to their accounts. “Every expectation is that the money will roll out to others quickly,” she said.

The breakthrough followed intense overnight talks between the campus administration and the union, with the university also agreeing to include back pay from a three per cent salary increase in the February payroll for the period of August 1, 2023, to July 31, 2024.

“The university was able to confirm it had funds available for the payment of the retroactive sums and to apply the current adjusted payments for salaries and wages,” Moore told reporters. 

“The university was committed to completing those retroactive payments by April this year. The union insisted, however, that the university was not in a position to negotiate that kind of distance between the availability of funds and payment of said funds, especially given that the university no doubt was in a position to do the calculations to submit the request in the first place for the disbursement of funds to facilitate the payment of retroactive increases.

“We were able to receive from the university its commitment that the lump sum payments of the $1 500 which is owed to staff will be paid today – that’s on the union’s request – and all other retroactive sums will be applied to the payroll for this month. So the workers, in keeping with the union’s commitment that once our demand was met the workers will go back in, the workers are now in the process of resuming duty,” the union boss added.

She applauded the UWI workers for their solidarity over the past two days.

“To the members of the university division, we say, ‘Solidarity forever’. Your unity is a strength, and we look forward to the university committing to the remaining payments,” Moore said. “We also look forward to being able to continue to address several outstanding grievances that have been impacting our members and causing much frustration. Too many of them are still protracted, but today, we celebrate that the efforts of the workers and their sacrifice have met with success.”

The strike’s impact was felt across the campus, as classrooms and administrative buildings remained locked, leaving students and non-unionised staff members shut out of their rooms. 

Moore said classes on Thursday were contingent solely on the administration’s promise to pay the staff.

“If the university gives [the] commitment to meet payments and the university does not honour that commitment today, then the workers have the power. I don’t think that the university would want to relegate the position that it is now in to honour its commitment, to workers having to exercise the kind of force that we have seen for the last few days. Not so soon. Give them time to forget.

“If the payments do not reach the bank [Thursday]. . . I have asked our members to meet me here [Friday] morning at 7 [a.m.] if those payments are not completed. I have every belief that the university, having gone through the ordeal of fracturing the trust that should be at an institution that is established as this, in terms of its collective relationship with the union, will do everything that they have to do to make good on their most recent promise to the workers of the university,” the BWU general secretary said.

She sought to portray strikes and other forms of industrial action as a necessary evil to ensure employer compliance and achieve justice in the workplace.

“It is regrettable that in 2024, we still are connected to our colonial past, that it is only with whips and force that people even at the levels of management do what they ought to have done in the first place.  [Regrettably,] the union will have to use the tool of last resort at any point in time and it’s more regrettable when we’ve had a mature system of industrial relations,” Moore said.

“And so it is my responsibility to issue a call to other workers in Barbados not to continue to suffer in silence but when the demand is there, when that tool of last resort has to be used, or it’s recognised that it should be used, that workers will band together in a way that the staff of the university unified in solidarity to get the outcome that they wanted and that they had been requesting.” 

(RG)