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President of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT), Pedro Shepherd.

BUT looking into issues at Springer

 

Members of the Executive of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) are expected to visit the Springer Memorial School today to access the plant, given the complaints that were reported in the media last month.
 
Word of the intended visit came from its President, Pedro Shepherd, who said that the Union’s decision to look in at the Government Hill educational facility is in spite of the fact that none of its members have reported the situation to its office, even though the majority of teachers there are BUT members. He made the point as he contended that the Union can better represent them when they make their grievances known, pointing out that if the Union does not hear from them, they assume there are no issues.
 
“The Barbados Union of Teachers has the majority of membership at Springer Memorial. We do not have the majority at Combermere or The Lodge School, but we have members there and where we have one member, we have a duty to respond to anything that happens at the school… Up to today we have not heard anything from our members from Springer Memorial and that has been an issue, because the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union, with the minority membership, has been spewing out a lot of information re the situation at Springer School,” he said.
 
He is urging the membership at Springer Memorial to keep the BUT abreast of the situation at the school, so they can determine what course of action is required. He made the point as he explained that the Union’s current policy is to liaise with the Ministry and school first to try to solve any issues at those levels, rather than taking them public. However, he said that if the membership feels that the Union has to change its strategy and be more boisterous in order to keep members happy and sustain its membership, then they may have to go that route.
 
“But we need to know so that when other unions start to make noise that we would be aware of the situation. We know we would have dealt with the situation and that certain things would have been put in place, cause when we met with the Ministry in February, we were aware of what was happening at Springer; all the solutions that were put in place, all the decisions that were taken to resolve the issues at Springer School,” he said. (JRT)
 

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