By EARYEL BOWLEG
Tribune Staff Reporter
ebowleg@tribunemedia.net
A MEETING will be held to get feedback from educators on the government’s financial proposal to the Bahamas Union of Teachers, according to BUT president Belinda Wilson.
She gave the update in a voice note yesterday. It comes after the BUT president had previously told teachers to get ready to take industrial action on August 22.
“I received a written correspondence from the financial secretary of The Bahamas through the lead negotiator yesterday, Sunday, August 7 2022,” Mrs Wilson said. “The contents of the correspondents is not in keeping with the proposal that you the members voted for.
“I am in communication with the lead negotiator. I have submitted a written response and I’m awaiting their answers. I will keep you posted and a meeting will be held and actually it may be held prior to August 18 so that I can get all of your feedback as to the financial proposal that the government has submitted to the Bahamas Union of Teachers. I’ve been in constant negotiation with the government’s lead negotiator for the past two days as recently as a few minutes ago.”
This latest development comes after she stated in a voice note dated Thursday that the union was closer “than we’ve ever been to concluding this full industrial agreement.”
In that communication to members she said: “I’ve been in constant communication with the government’s lead negotiator for the past two days as recently as a few minutes ago.
“Both sides have agreed and/or withdrawn the three non-economic articles that were outstanding respectively. I await a final agreement on two financial matters. We are closer than we’ve ever been to concluding this full industrial agreement.”
Mrs Wilson added: “I want you to rest assured that the BUT negotiating team, we are crossing all T’s and dotting all I’s to ensure that we have the best industrial agreement for all of our members from Grand Bahama to Inagua.”
“(The) lead negotiator and I will continue to work and our final session is on Thursday August 18, 2022. So, our final session with the government’s negotiators will be Thursday, August 18, 2022.”
The union president added that she will hold a general membership meeting via Zoom on August 18 as well.
Lester Turnquest, a senior negotiator for the government, revealed on Friday that at this stage the negotiations were 99.9 percent completed with the contractual articles with the BUT and there are now simply “one or two bones of contention.”
We think that it’s going to be resolved amicably and in the fullness of time we will arrive at a contractual signing for the BUT as we did today with the BECAWU,” he told reporters last week.
