Some of the GAIA staff who were off the job yesterday.
Several workers at the Grantley Adams International Airport (GAIA) were off the job yesterday, protesting the breakdown in wages and salaries negotiations between their representative union and the management of the airport.
General Secretary of the National Union of Public Workers, Roslyn Smith, told the media that they were asked to defer such talks until the Central Government began negotiations on wages and salaries. This, she said, led to employees of various sections within the airport engaging in protests, including the custodians and engineers. She explained that during the last meeting the GAIA had put forward an increase of 15.5 per cent, while the Union had put 16 per cent on the table. Now, she lamented, they are being told the airport is taking theirs off the table and they are making a fresh decision.
Smith said the Union is of the view that while they were “negotiating in good faith”, Government was “negotiating in bad faith”. Meanwhile, regarding the way forward, the union boss said they will continue on a work to rule until it is decided if the industrial action will be stepped up.
One of the workers, David Durant, said that negotiations have been ongoing for some time between the Union and the management of the GAIA, and it is unfair that Government now wants to tie the GAIA staff to the overall public service negotiations.
“We have a problem with that. You can’t tie us to the public service now? Why weren’t we tied to the public service all the time? The public service gets their increments. I know of people who got their increments who would have started their salaries around the same time as me with one figure, and my figure was the same; they’ve got their increments. So incrementally for the last eight years we’ve been stuck, the engineering, all the custodians, everybody has been stuck ... at one salary,” he indicated.
Durant said that GAIA has been making money since 2009, and it is only fair that the workers benefit from those profits. (JRT)
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