UNION Focused on getting the job done

THE Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) will remain focused on the issues.

This is the assurance given by General Secretary Toni Moore, who was responding to the media during a press briefing yesterday on the impact, if any, that the recent drug charges brought against head of the Barbados Private Sector Association Charles Herbert would have on the social partnership.

Stating that the BWU “speaks for this union and does not get into the business of speaking on behalf of others”, Moore said that her union has not yet heard a statement from the private sector.

“I am sure the private sector will determine for the private sector what’s best for the private sector.

“The social partnership will continue to do its work. If the conference in August decides that the pleasure of the union has expired as it relates to Toni Moore, I don’t believe that the BWU’s impact will diminish because institutions have to be bigger than the people who stand at the helm. People can fall off the scene for whatever reason in a flash.”

She stressed that at the level of the social partnership or in any setting, the BWU is committed to treating to issues and not to people.

“So where we are as a country and the economic situation confronting us, whoever is speaking for those issues, and therefore shaping the decisions that feed into how those issues will be implemented, we will continue to do what we have been doing.

“On that score, the BWU is very pleased that we now have and we can proudly sit in a revitalised social partnership that is focused at all levels and committed to addressing the very serious challenges that we have to grapple with right now. I think it is unfortunate that things that may come to shift focus off of that, but we certainly in the BWU we remain focused on the task at hand and that is to deliver for our constituents in the best possible way.”

Moore reiterated that shifting focus to the “who” rather than the “what, why and where we have to go”, will run the risk of not delivering for the people of Barbados.

“That is why I am saying is our focus remains on the challenges. We anticipate the IMF will be back sometime later this month, perhaps towards the end of August and we have to be prepared. Prepared with the responses that are going to make sense.

“Not merely for the members we serve but the whole of Barbados who may not all agree with the things we say, but who we remain focused on and committed to ensuring that the decisions that we support are decisions that even if painful or uncomfortable, are decisions that will redound to the benefit of all of us in the long run, and assure us the sustainable future that we want and so desperately need,” she said. (JH)