‘Attack on women’

The recent announcement made by Prime Minister, the Honourable, Mia Amor Mottley that there would be layoffs in the public service, will heavily impact women, so much so, that General Secretary of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW), Roslyn Smith angrily made the accusation that it is a clear case of “an attack on women.”

Speaking to the media after the heated two and a half hour meeting recently at their headquarters on Monday evening, she said that when you look at the portfolio of the jobs that will be cut, they are positions that are held mostly by women.

“When you look at all of these steno-typists and clerk-typists, they are women in the public service. It is a gender issue. Women are the breadwinners, homemakers and everything like that. When you put all of those women on the breadline, tell me what are you doing? I have a difficulty with that.”

She stated that the majority of these women are single parents, who are therefore the main breadwinners for their respective families.

“All throughout the public service, you are abolishing steno-typists and clerk-typists and a 100 per cent of those persons are women. You are attacking the women in Barbados. They are the breadwinners. The women that are being laid off are the breadwinners in Barbados. They are single parents and mothers of children. So you attack the public service… and you are talking about up to 2020. What nonsense is that? Something is wrong. If you want to be fair and transparent, all should have been done at the same time, but by the end of the month, you have our women folk out on the streets.”

The General Secretary stated that she cannot state exactly how many of the 1 500 to be sent home will be women.

“I don’t know yet… only last Wednesday we were given the numbers. Today (Monday) we got some information. She [Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley] made reference on TV to certain things. We need to sit down. You hear about the GIS and the printery and all of these kinds of things. We don’t have the information to say ‘yes, they are going to merge, this section is going to be affected, whatever, but as it stands now, it is an attack on women in the workforce,” she lamented.

Smith added that they have had talks and put forward some suggestions and that they would now wait to see if they would be accepted or not.

“We had some talks today (Monday). We made some representations, we are waiting to see if they accept them or not. I think going forward, it is a serious indictment on women in the public service. I don’t even think she must have even realised that it is a gender-based thing that we are looking at. All of those people within those categoriesare female, with children – single parents.” (PJT)