Thursday, March 28, 2024

OUTSIDE THE PULPIT: Call in army next time

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Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity.  – Matthew 20: 14-15.

IT SEEMS AS THOUGH some workers in Barbados can take industrial action whenever they feel like and it is justified by the public and their union.

But teachers in primary and secondary schools are not supposed to withdraw their labour. Are they not workers too?

Wildcat strike

Last week, the drivers from the state-owned Transport Board staged what I called a wildcat strike and refused to work until their union, the Barbados Workers’ Union, got involved.

If our teachers had done such a thing, everybody (the public) would have cried foul on them and would have been asking, “what about the children?”.

The spokesperson from the division of the union for the bus workers claimed that they wanted to take action from the Tuesday, but put it off until the Wednesday because of the Common Entrance Examination.

But what about those thousands of children who were writing their CXC exams to coincide with others across the region?

Let me remind those drivers that CXC exams run from April to June each year and what they did could have cost the Barbados Government $200 000, relating to the Electronic Document Preparation Management paper that day.

The Transport Board may have gone about the hiring of a worker in the wrong way of  but the drivers must remember that they cannot tell the board who to hire.

I think the time is ripe that if such an occasion should arise again, we should look at using members of the Barbados Defence Force to come out and drive the buses.

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