‘Too many free riders’

 General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union, Toni Moore, has thrown out a challenge to government to approve the call for agency legislation to help strengthen the trade union movement.

 

Addressing the large audience on hand for the opening of the union’s 75th Annual Delegates Conference, she turned the spotlight on the event’s resolution of agency legislation, requiring that all workers – regardless of being a union member or not – be required to pay a sum equivalent to the dues paid by union members to either a workers’ organisation or charity.

 

“…Unlike Canada, we do not have an arrangement where we go to the labour board and once the labour relations board gives the union accredited status, then all members of the bargaining unit must become members of the union; that closed shop arrangement that would be beautiful, but we don’t have it and we are not asking for it in that resolution on agency. 

 

“What we are recognising is that – and this is not an attempt to disturb democracy in anyway, but we have had a situation over the years where there have been too many free riders, and I make no apology for that. We have had situations over the years where on the sacrifice of a few, others continue to prosper, not giving a single thing about those who continue to sacrifice, but who continue to benefit and who continue at times to tear down whenever the moment arises,” she said to the loud applause of those gathered at Solidarity House.

 

An impassioned Moore continued, “We are not asking for the dues. If you don’t want to give us the $26, give it to the Cancer Society or the Diabetes Association, because if we are going to benefit sacrifice must be carried by all.”