Carib: Workers are welcome back on the job

THE CARIBBEAN Development Company (CDC) and its sister company, Carib Glassworks Limited (CGL) said yesterday they were pleased with the Industial Court’s decision in the Carib “lockout” issue. However, the other side of the coin, the National Union of Government and Federated Workerss (NUGFW) expressed a different sentiment. Carib’s group marke-ting manager, David Inglefield said at a news conference: “Although we are pleased with the court’s decision, we continue to be deeply concerned with the plight of our employees who continue to suffer as a result of this misguided action of their union.” The union’s president general, Robert Giuse-ppi, who also hosted a press conference said, “Disappointed, but not surprised.”

Inglefield said CDC /CGL regretted the hardships their employees have had to endure and they stood ready, as before, to welcome them back to their jobs immediately. The workers have been on the “lockout” line for almost seven weeks, and sought through an injunction to get back on the job. The Industrial Court refused to grant the injunction on Thursday. Inglefield assured employees that individual contracts offered to them did not in any way prejudice their entitlement to representation of their rights as workers, and contained the companies’ proposed offer of a 12 percent wage increase. In his statement, Inglefield admitted that since the workers were off the jobs, the company had sustained significant losses. He assured that the company had no quarrel with the workers.

Meanwhile, at his press conference, Giuse-ppi said as far as he and the NUGFW were concerned, the Industrial Court had no other way to go, because it was influenced by the “ruling bourgeois” in the country. He criticised the composition of the court’s quorum. “It started with three members and it ended up with five,” because it knew the importance of the issue. If that was a worry, what was of more concern to Giuseppi was that not one member of the five had any connection with labour. “All of them, all conservative, either on the employer’s side or the Government’s side,” said Giuseppi. He accused the companies of bargaining in bad faith. At the press conference yesterday were executive members of the National Trade Union Centre (NATUC) – Vincent Cabrera, James Lambert, and Aldwyn Brewster.