�Urge parents, students, unions to support workers�
PHILIPSBURG--Three unions representing civil servants and teachers have upped the ante and have summoned all their members to a joint meeting at L.B. Scott Sports Auditorium today scheduled to start at 7:30am.
Windward Islands Teachers Union (WITU) President Claire Elshot made a public call on two radio stations Sunday for parents, students and other unions to join workers in their struggle in what she called a "national crisis."
Pelican workers are expected to join as Workers Institute for Organised Labour (WIFOL) has also called its members to a meeting at the WIFOL building at 9:00am today.
The Windward Islands Health Care Workers Union has expressed solidarity with the three unions. Representatives of the St. Maarten Communications (SMCU) attended Friday's joint meeting and participated in the march to the Government Administration Building.
This will be the third meeting to be called jointly by WITU, Windward Islands Civil Servants Union/Private Sector Union (WICSU/PSU) and ABVO during school hours and the fourth meeting to be called by the unions since they intensified their lobby for members to be paid their full 5.3 per cent cost-of-living adjustment as agreed to by the former National Alliance-led island government in August 2010.
Speaking on "For The Record" radio programme on 99.9FM on Sunday, Elshot said workers would be discussing a proposal sent to the unions over the weekend. Government also made a proposal during a meeting with the WITU, WICSU/PSU and ABVO on Friday, but workers did not agree with it.
Elshot said the weekend proposal seemed to be "more acceptable." However, she noted that it was not up to the union leaders to decide whether to accept the proposal. It has to be taken back to the members for possible ratification.
The August 10 decision was "a legal" decision taken by the former National Alliance-led (NA-led) Executive Council and was put in the form of an island resolution. Elshot said all agreements made before 10-10-10 should be brought over to Country St. Maarten.
The boards of WITU, WICSU/PSU and ABVO were scheduled to meet on the matter on Sunday afternoon. Elshot said this issue represented a "national crisis" and called on Members of Parliament (MPs) to act.
She said the workers should not be "pick-pocketed" to balance the budget.
Told that Governor Eugene Holiday was scheduled to visit Milton Peters College today to talk with students there, Elshot suggested that he should visit the teachers and other workers at L.B. Scott Sports Auditorium.
WIFOL President Theophilus Thompson had said on an earlier radio programme with Lloyd Richardson on 1300AM that the "union-busting" tactics being applied to workers "has to be stopped." He said if this continued the unions would have to resort to the "old fashioned" means of dealing with labour disputes.
"We cannot tolerate any form of slavery and what we are seeing is paramount to that. Too many things are happening in the labour force that are not right. Parliament and government have to take responsibility," Thompson said.
Thompson said that under the former Netherlands Antilles constellation the Central Government Minister of Labour and top officials would have been dispatched to St. Maarten already to resolve this national crisis.
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