President of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT), Pedro Shepherd.
Some of the teachers assembled for the meeting in Queen’s Park yesterday.
B.U.T READY TO FIGHT
Thu, 05/05/2016 - 12:00am
THE Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) has declared war on the Ministry of Education.
President of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT), Pedro Shepherd, made the declaration as he addressed a mass meeting of teachers in Queen’s Park yesterday afternoon. The crowd of about 500 teachers from primary and secondary schools throughout the island, in spite of the darkening skies and light rain, listened attentively to Shepherd and the others who spoke, and even when technical difficulties resulted in the speakers going down, the teachers simply drew closer to the gazebo to hear better what the President had to say.
However, explaining the pronouncement to the media after his close to one-and-half-hour address, Shepherd maintained that war in industrial relations simply means they are “in the fighting mood” and that nothing is going to turn them back unless they have the meeting that has been requested.
“It is a peaceful war; it is not a war where we are going to bring our guns blazing. We are simply saying to the Minister we are in the mood where we expect you to come and resolve these issues, otherwise we will do what we have to do, even if it means meeting once per week, twice per week during school time, because we’re not going to meet with our members outside of school time.
“We are going to put pressure, and if pressure means that we have to meet during school time, we are prepared to meet during school time,” he maintained.
Addressing the crowd earlier, which included General Secretary of the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations, Dennis DePeiza and Shadow Minister of Education, Member of Parliament for St. James North, Edmund Hinkson, he again called for the Minister of Education, Ronald Jones, to resign if he cannot work with the Union, while still expressing their willingness to meet with the Minister and Ministry officials at a mutually agreeable time.
Additionally, the union boss, urging the Minister’s fellow Cabinet colleagues to urge him to eat some humble pie and speak to the teachers, indicated that the BUT would be sending a letter to Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Freundel Stuart, to ask him to intervene in the matter and to chair the meeting with the teachers.
“To have somebody neutral chairing this meeting, whether it is the Prime Minister himself, Minister Todd, Senator McClean, somebody... but assign somebody to mediate, because it is now BUT versus the Ministry. The battle has been declared,” he stressed.
The BUT head said he was hoping that even as the teachers gathered at the park yesterday morning, the Minister, whose office is just across the street, could have met them there and given the teachers a hearing.
“All we wanted was 15 minutes of his time. He cannot give us 15 minutes of his time, but he could entertain the press for four hours last week… Instead of giving the press four hours, give us 15 minutes,” he said.
Speaking more to the letter the BUT plans to send to Prime Minister Stuart, Shepherd told media personnel that as Minister of Civil Service, the PM has responsibility for teachers, and in that capacity, they will be requesting that he organise a meeting with the BUT, either the Executive or the full members, and the Ministry of Education.
“[But] the ultimate thing that we need is for the Minister of Education to meet with us. So even if the Prime Minister meets a small group of us, we still want the Minister of Education to meet with teachers, so that would just be a preliminary meeting to sort of create the pathway for what we expect would be a large meeting at the gymnasium or Lloyd Erskine, or even here in Queen’s Park, where teachers can speak directly to the Minister of Education, the Chief Education Officer, and other officers who are responsible for schools across Barbados,” he said.
Shepherd said they will give the PM some time to respond, but if within two weeks they still have not received word of a meeting, he vows they will hit the road again. (JRT)