BUT President claims teachers were afraid to attend meeting
By:
Patricia Thangaraj
It is fear that kept teachers from attending the meeting called by the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) yesterday at 1:30 p.m.
This is the belief of BUT President, Pedro Shepherd, who addressed the media after the 5 p.m. conclusion of the meeting with some of its members.
“Let me say that I expected a lot more teachers to be here today, but there are a number of factors that could have come into play. There are probably some who would say the weather [played a part], but I know that teachers are...very fearful of the Ministry of Education,” Shepherd charged.
“Now on Monday, the Barbados Union of Teachers would have written the Ministry asking for permission for teachers to attend.…We received a response from the Ministry yesterday that they are not supporting the granting of permission for teachers to attend the meetings, and that they believe – or they are of the view, rather – that once teachers’ unions hold meetings during school hours, then that is tantamount to industrial action and therefore they could not support [it],” he revealed.
“They also followed that up today with a letter to the principals of nursery, primary and secondary schools with the subject captioned ‘Barbados Union of Teachers and Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union Meeting”, in which they stated that they “are not supporting the meeting today at 1:30 p.m. and that both unions and that the Ministry believes that convening the meeting would be tantamount to industrial action.”
He said that the principals were told to forward this notice to all of the teachers in their respective schools.
“And they asked that the circular be given to every teacher. So there are some teachers who were actually given this particular circular today and principals were told not to give permission. Now obviously principals as part of management and agents of the Ministry would have to carry out the dictates of the Ministry.”
The BUT President lamented that he believes that it was this latter correspondence especially that would have led to the low turnout at yesterday’s meeting.
"So we have to – as the two unions - now look at the two letters sent from the Ministry and see how we are going to deal with this because it is a serious threat - as I said earlier - to the trade union movement and to industrial relations and how we go forward.”
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