Cabinet to discuss furloughing port workers and implementing voluntary redundancy
Prime Minister Gaston Browne made some stark remarks in Parliament on Tuesday, as he scolded the Antigua & Barbuda Workers Union (ABWU) for encouraging port workers to take industrial action over unpaid bonuses.
As a result of the threat to withhold their services, Browne said Cabinet would be discussing reinstating voluntary redundancy and will have to consider furloughing some of the 250 port workers.
Browne claims that the port only needs 80 of the 250 workers currently employed in order to function efficiently.
He revealed that when his government took office in 2014, it made the decision to suspend a voluntary retrenchment programme which had been in the works by the former administration.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne is putting Port workers and their Union on alert that should any industrial action be sanctioned…the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force is on standby to fill the void.
This follows a December 11 letter from the Antigua and Barbuda Workers Union to the Port Authority’s Human Resources Manager Jacqueline Swift.
The missive demands a 3.5 percent bonus be paid to workers on or before the 15th of December.
ABS’s Leon Norville has the latest on this developing story.