Secretary-Treasurer of the Waterfront and Allied Workers Union (WAWU), Kertiste Augustus, has expressed mixed feelings about the year 2019 which he states was “challenging and to a certain degree successful”.
Augustus said that the challenges which WAWU faced last year included the sale of two banks, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and the First Caribbean International Bank (FCIB), where the staff was represented by the union.
In December 2019, a consortium of Eastern Caribbean indigenous banks of which the National Bank of Dominica (NBD) is part, announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase all RBC banking operations in the Eastern Caribbean.
“The RBC was acquired by a consortium of indigenous banks in the OECS while the FCIB was in fact purchased by an entity from Latin America,” Augustus said in an interview with Dominica News Online (DNO). “We are in fact addressing both of those issues…where we are hoping that we will be able to discuss…the implications and the challenge coming out from that action.”
He said he plans to travel to Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday, December 9th 2020, to meet with other trade unions which represent staff in other FCIB regional operations to discuss a united approach to this matter.
Another area of concern for the union, according to Augustus, is the financial difficulty which regional airline, LIAT, has been experiencing over the years.
To address this situation, he said eight Caribbean countries, including Dominica, within the management of LIAT, are using a strategy called Minimum Revenue Guarantee (MRG).
The request for a minimum revenue guarantee (MRG) from countries served by LIAT is part of an amended restructuring plan which was endorsed by shareholder governments, following a meeting in St Vincent on March 9, 2019.
LIAT asked eight Caribbean countries, including Dominica, to contribute to a total of US$5.4 million to an emergency fund, with the aim of keeping its planes in the sky.
A meeting was held in Barbados among shareholder governments, airline management and trade unions that represent LIAT workers to discuss the way forward.
Augustus revealed that although Dominica is the only country that has kept its commitment to this strategy, WAWU has had no discussion with or information from the government in relation to the MRG.
“It is an area that we need to engage our administration in discussions”, the WAWU official stated.
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