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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

WASA workers demand sick leave bonus payout

by

Peter Christopher
1519 days ago
20201223

Dai­ly paid WASA work­ers, hop­ing that they will re­ceive sick leave bonus­es ahead of the Christ­mas hol­i­day, staged a protest at the Wa­ter util­i­ty’s head of­fice in St Joseph.

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers’ WASA sec­tion Andy Crichlow said it was just an­oth­er in­stance of dis­re­spect to­wards the dai­ly paid work­ers.

“If you don’t have mon­ey there is a process one would go through. Don’t take dai­ly paid peo­ple down to the wire who heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on that sick leave bonus to take care of their Christ­mas busi­ness, to then come and say we eh have,” he said.

Crichlow ex­plained that the arrange­ment to pay sick leave bonus dur­ing Christ­mas had been in place for 50 years and he was at pains to un­der­stand why it was not be­ing up­held this time around.

“It’s a sim­ple thing, the man­age­ment once again have de­cid­ed to dis­re­spect the dai­ly paid work­ers, vi­o­late the col­lec­tive agree­ment and ap­par­ent­ly they are be­ing sup­port­ed by the Min­is­ter or he made some state­ment. Sure­ly he wasn’t prop­er­ly in­formed. He re­al­ly claimed they was ly­ing to him, so ap­par­ent­ly they ly­ing to him. The sick leave bonus is not some­thing we ask­ing for. Sick leave bonus old­er than the Min­is­ter him­self,” said Crichlow.

Sick leave bonus is paid out to work­ers who opt not to take the ma­jor­i­ty of their al­lo­cat­ed sick days, es­sen­tial­ly serv­ing as a com­pen­sato­ry in­cen­tive for work­ers not to call in sick.

WASA work­ers fall un­der es­sen­tial ser­vices and as such many work­ers at the au­thor­i­ty worked dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down pe­ri­od.

“This is not an of­fen­sive move or a de­fen­sive move, and is not an of­fen­sive move is just that we have to ex­press our dis­sat­is­fac­tion from the man­age­ment and by ex­ten­sion the min­is­ter. We hop­ing to meet with the act­ing CO to see what could be worked out,” he said.

Dur­ing the protest, the work­ers said they had oth­er con­cerns, with some ex­press­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion about the lack of back­pay.

Crichlow, how­ev­er, made ref­er­ence to more state­ments made by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les, such as the call for WASA work­ers to im­prove their ser­vice as well as the debt owed to the util­i­ty by the pub­lic.

“You can’t have 700 mil­lion dol­lars out­side there and telling me you can’t find 8.5 mil­lion to pay me If that come to us in true hon­esty we would have go out there and col­lect that mon­ey to pay we self...700 mil­lion dol­lars it easy to get 7 mil­lion dol­lars from that,” said Crichlow.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said he could not di­rect­ly re­spond to the union rep­re­sen­ta­tive’s state­ments since he did not all the de­tails re­gard­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

He, how­ev­er, said, “I ex­pect WASA man­age­ment to do their job with full ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy for the ex­pen­di­ture of pub­lic funds. That’s all I ex­pect from them.”

Mean­while WASA in a state­ment yes­ter­day evening said it, “recog­nis­es that these pay­ments are part of the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment for Dai­ly Rat­ed em­ploy­ees, as spec­i­fied in Ar­ti­cle 6 of the Col­lec­tive Agree­ment be­tween the Au­thor­i­ty and the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) and is due to em­ploy­ees who utilise two or less sick days per year.”

The Au­thor­i­ty said it is com­mit­ted to meet­ing its oblig­a­tions to its em­ploy­ees un­der the sub­sist­ing Col­lec­tive Agree­ment as it had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the union in a let­ter dat­ed De­cem­ber 15.


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