MoBay Metro drivers back on the job

WESTERN BUREAU:

Drivers employed to the Montego Bay Metro Bus Company (MBMBC), who have been on strike since last Tuesday, returned to work yesterday to satisfy the condition for a meeting between their union (NWU) and the management of the bus company, which is slated for midday today.

However, should the meeting fail to address the workers’ primary concern, which relates to deductions made from their March salary, they could again withdraw their services.

When The Gleaner visited the bus depot yesterday, a driver, who asked not to be identified, said they have decided to resume duties but will only remain on the job if the MBMBC management satisfies a request by their union for pertinent documents, which are needed to decide whether the deductions were in fact authorised.

“We will work only for today, but come tomorrow if they do not produce documents to show where the mistakes were made against our salary deduction, we will resume the strike come tomorrow afternoon,” the driver said.

When The Gleaner contacted Alexander Nicholson, the acting Island supervisor for the National Workers Union (NWU), yesterday, he said the matter had been referred to the Ministry of Labour. But the ministry has reportedly redirected the matter back to the local level, because of their policy not to meet with workers while they are on strike.

“We have a meeting tomorrow (today) to go through what they say was the error, and then we will take it from there,” said Nicholson. “We will just go through what they say, see what they claim were errors, or what they claim were overpayments, and we hope the management honour their promise at that meeting tomorrow, to bring some closure to this matter.”

“The workers are back on the job based on a promise that they will provide whatever documentation we need. What cannot be printed will be shown to us, and we will look at what transpired from the onset, that the first documents that we were requesting from November. They are ready now to provide us with that and to now identify where the workers should be placed ...,” said Nicholson.

The MBMBC’s general manager, Shaune-Gaye Brown, had initially agreed to turn over the requested document to the union as part of a back-to-work deal with the drivers. She later backtracked, however, claiming that the document contains confidential information.

The dispute erupted when the management of the MBMBC, without providing supporting documents, deducted monies from the April salaries of the bus drivers. The MBMBC said the drivers had been overpaid in March as the result of a blunder by the Ministry of Finance in computing their new salary packages under a government reclassification exercise.

The workers, however, reject the claim, arguing that the monies were the result of a negotiated settlement between their union and the Ministry of Finance. They then withdrew their service, demanding to see the document with the error and the written instruction to make the deductions from their salaries.