Wasco worker says: ‘We can shut St Lucia down!’

St. Lucia Star

WASCO workers want answers and they want them now. Not even the leaders of their unions can persuade them to be more patient. In fact, one union general secretary was reportedly lifted up and forcibly carried out of the compound to his vehicle when he tried to coax the staff to postpone strike action which started yesterday.

David Demacque of the Civil Service Association joked on Wednesday morning that he quite enjoyed the ride but confirmed to the STAR that the union imagined that it would be to the workers benefit not to take strike action until after the government was ready to divulge the findings of a consultant’s review of the company and the possibility of privatization.

Unfortunately for Demacque, and other union leaders, WASCO management and the government, WASCO workers have heard it all before and they don’t want to discuss any more postponements until the prime minister himself addresses their concerns directly. They say they are at the end of their rope and they are willing to flex their muscles if they have to.

“We have the entire tourism industry in our hands,” one striking worker said. “They think they are dealing with a bunch of illiterates and they can just ignore us and disrespect us. But if we want we can shut St Lucia down. We are trying to be patient, but these fellas are taking us for maji. They have to respect us and they have to come down here and tell us the truth.”

Yesterday, Wednesday 4th November they finally took strike action after months of extending the deadline by which they promised to take action. Although water still came through the taps, operations of the Water and Sewerage Company were practically shut down as dozens of workers in Castries and hundreds of workers all over the island protested what they say is the disrespect shown to them by the government.

Although tensions seemed high, WASCO management was loathe to involve police and risk an escalation.
Management of the water company may not agree with the workers methods, their intensity or their haste but they do agree that workers have a fair amount of reason to be grumpy.

“It is a legitimate strike,” WASCO manager John Joseph conceded. “They gave 30 days notice and a further 15 days extension. They want a decision about whether the company is going to be privatized or not.”
Where did it all start? Depends on who you ask.

For as long as John Joseph has been manager at WASCO, talk of privatization has been causing WASCO workers frustration—and that was ten years ago.

Many workers have found it impossible to access loans because banks and other financial institutions see WASCO as a company in transition and expect that at any moment, many workers could lose their jobs, due to privatization.

In May of this year, while teachers and civil servants were protesting against government’s postponement of their increases, WASCO were already on edge. Prime Minister Stephenson King responded directly to their demands for a final decision about privatization to be made and publicized by asking them for a 30 days more in which to make the decision. By the end of the 30 days, King had asked for 90 days more.

In October, the workers issued a notice of intent to take strike action if government did not keep its promise to make a final decision about WASCO. That would at least have the effect of ending uncertainty about the future of the company – if not persuade banks that WASCO workers were an acceptable risk.

Labour minister Edmund Estephane pulled the short straw and was assigned to go to workers to address their plight.

“The man was there as though he didn’t even know what was going on,” one former shop steward told the STAR of Estephane. “He couldn’t answer any of our questions, he couldn’t tell us anything new. The only thing he could do was ask for another extension of 30 days for the government.”

With their patience already worn thin, the workers granted Estephane and the government 15 days more. This past Tuesday was the 15th day. Yesterday, workers wanted no more excuses, no more talk of patience or time for the consultants to do their work. They wanted answers and they wanted them now.

On Wednesday afternoon, leaders of the Civil Service Association and the National Workers Union met with managers of WASCO and found out that they were on the same page, supporting the workers in principle, while urging for workers to dial back tensions and exercise more patience. But workers had already made up their minds and there was nothing that their own union representatives could do to persuade them to back down.

“The members are the ultimate decision-makers,” Demacque told the STAR, even while admitting, “although we in the union might imagine that there could be a better way of going about this.”
Why is the government delaying giving WASCO workers the answers they need?

Perhaps because while they were on the election campaign trail they had promised never to privatize WASCO, but once they were in power, they moved, even faster than the previous Labour government to sell the water company off. The privatization of WASCO is considered by many to be one of the ruling party’s broken election promises. The process of privatizing the company has been further complicated by problems in the bidding process and doubts within the ruling party about whether to go ahead with the process of divesting the government of WASCO. But many workers seem to be fed up of the vacillation of the government about whether or not they will privatization the company. They are not impressed by the government’s problems as much as they are by their own.

The government has now promised that it will be ready to give WASCO workers the answers they need, but there is always a but. The government wants one more 15-day extension. A government review of the possibility of privatizing WASCO is said to be complete and the cabinet wants to buy a little time to study the contents before they make any more breakable promises to WASCO’s workers.

But WASCO workers say that if the report is already available to government, then the government should already be in a position to send a representative to the workers to tell them where they stand and explain once and for all whether or not water will be privatized.

WASCO shop stewards were scheduled to have a meeting at the labour department with the minister, the unions and WASCO management, but at the time of writing shop stewards were insisting there would be no meeting if the government did not show them respect by sending someone to communicate with the strikers directly.

“The government’s presence is important,” one shop steward said. “The more this is prolonged the worse it will get.”

This entry was posted on 8. November 2009 at 15:08 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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