Elroy Boucher, President of the Public Service Union (PSU) said that despite the workers at the Argyle International Airport (AIA) accepted a deal to receive outstanding retroactive payments, he believes that they should have demanded a better deal.
After indicating that they could not afford to pay the outstanding money, the AIA team eventually proposed the payment of 60 percent of outstanding retroactive payments with the remaining 40 percent to be awarded in paid vacation time.
In addition, the company has promised to review salaries of the workers.
“But what transpired really is not fair I would have gone against it,” Boucher said adding that he had to respect the decision of the majority.
Workers at the AIA threatened strike action over non-payment of retroactive payments for the years 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Boucher said that he got upset with the behaviour of the representative from the AIA and that after about two hours of negotiating, he got up with the intent on not resolving the issue therefore allowing the workers to go ahead with their proposed industrial action.
“And then somebody, when I got up to leave, a member from our team said you couldn’t even offer the workers, if you wanted to really, if you are so concerned about what is happening, you couldn’t even offer them 60 percent,” Boucher said.
And that was when the response coming from the AIA team was yes, that they were able to do that.
“At the same time, we were in dialogue with the workers on ‘Whatsapp’,” the PSU President continued.
And they indicated that they needed everything, then the offer was changed to offer them the 60 percent payment with the remaining 40 percent in time off.
“That decision came from the workers and the company agreed,” Boucher indicated.
He acknowledged that the workers had not lost anything, but he believes that the meeting could have been better if the company showed a little more respect to the workers and be honest with them.
“It is money owed to the workers, it is not a salary negotiation or something that you are bargaining for,” Boucher said.
“I am not supposed to be negotiating whether you pay me or not,” he continued.
The most important thing according to him was the recognition that they owed the workers, and they did not have that respect for the workers.
According to Boucher, had the team from AIA recognized the fact that the workers were owed then he believed that their behaviour would have been different.
He said that he was upset with the management and their approach saying that they were behaving as if they were doing the workers a favour.
At times, the meeting became contentious Boucher said, because he said that he could not deal with the attitude of the AIA team.
“I mean, how could you tell me that you owe me and then make it sound like you doing me a favour?”
As for the workers’ acceptance, the PSU’s President said that it was a typical thing with workers here accepting what was eventually arrived at.
“Sometimes there is an element of fear in this country, it is not foreign to the workers of AIA,” Boucher said.
He added that he was aware of the political divide in the country, and that political divide also existed throughout the public service.
Boucher explained that this was evident in the recent battle between trade unions and the government with the amendment to the Public Health Act making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for certain sections of workers within the public sector.
And it was no different with the workers at the AIA.
“So, my concern was how many of them are loyal to their party than to their interest,” Boucher said.
When asked, the majority of them agreed to accept the offer, but according to Boucher he would not have gone against their decision.
