Cabrera: Duke must apologise to workers

VINCENT Cabrera, Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union (Bigwu) president has called on Public Services Association (PSA) president Watson Duke to apologise to the 11 workers who were wrongfully dismissed for engaging in industrial relations activities...if he is serious about making any peace offerings.

Eleven PSA workers who engaged in protest by wearing their Bigwu T-shirts to work were fired in February. The workers have been protesting the actions of the PSA executive and lack of information on the PSA’s pension plan.

Cabrera said although the Industrial Court ordered that the workers be reinstated and paid their February to May salaries, plus $10,000 each in compensation, the workers were greeted with closed doors when they showed up for work.

“When the reinstated workers presented themselves for work at the office of the PSA on June 6, they were greeted by notices which were stuck up on the front door of the PSA’s office on Abercromby Street. The workers were also told by the security guard that the offices were closed until June 21,” Cabrera said at a press conference on Monday.

“If Watson Duke is serious (about peace overtures) he has one more way to prove this. Go to the eleven workers that you dismissed for trade-union activities and apologise to each of them.

If you are serious, go to each one of them and say, ‘I am sorry for putting you on the breadline for four months.’

“What he has to do is to settle the negotiation that has been outstanding since 2010, register the pension plan and fix the many Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) violations at the offices at the PSA. If you are serious about peace, that is what you must do.”

Cabrera until then, Duke would have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of workers or trade unions and is unfit to hold any office whether trade union or political.

“Do you know the kind of trauma these people went through? Some of them lost their insurance. I have two questions,” he said, but went on to ask several.

“How can certain trade unions stomach and tolerate him being president of NATUC?

Cabrera regarded the firing of the PSA workers as an embarrassment for the trade union movement and that it pains him to have to deal with a fellow trade union leader. Cabrera said Duke was trying to give the impression that there is a war between Bigwu and PSA. “There is no war,” he said.