Tensions ran high at University of St. Martin (USM) on Thursday, when a group of university staff and lecturers met with their union to question the reasons behind the postponement of a meeting between the union and board.
The board and union were scheduled to meet and hammer out a list of grievances that led the workers to seek union representation late last year. However, Workers Institute for Organised Labour (WIFOL) Theophilus Thompson said the university had postponed the meeting at the eleventh hour, a move which infuriated his members.
USM President Josianne Fleming-Artsen said late yesterday that the meeting had been postponed because not all board members could be present. She said too that the agenda had been received late and members needed to be prepared.
The postponement resulted in the university workers meeting with their union on campus to express their frustrations and mull the issue.
The workers felt that management was dodging them and said they had been attempting to meet with the board on several occasions to no avail. "I want to know why it is that they don’t want to meet with the staff," one obviously incensed worker said during the impromptu meeting with Thompson and shop stewards Rhoda Arrindell and Michel Chance.
Since last year workers have been complaining about not being able to meet with the board. A meeting held in October last year was subsequently described as "dictatorial" by Thompson, who claimed that the workers had not been allowed to ask any questions.
Fleming-Artsen as well as members of the board and the "leadership team" who were meeting at a separate location at USM yesterday invited the union to sit with them to set a date for another meeting. After a short while parties agreed that the USM board and "leadership team" would meet with Thompson and his shop stewards next Monday to "set the ground rules" for another meeting where issues are expected to be hammered out.
Some workers questioned the necessity of a meeting just to set ground rules, however, Thompson said the union is focussed on the concerns of its members and will not budge from this during the meeting. Thompson said too that the union will propose during Monday’s meeting that management meet with the staff next Tuesday. He said the purpose of asking for this meeting is for workers to get a chance to ask burning questions and to get feedback on issues of concern.
Fleming-Artsen said the board has given employees several opportunities to meet in November and December 2008. "The board has given them a few opportunities to meet and those who wanted to avail themselves met with the board and those who did not want to, did not meet," she said in a telephone interview. "There was an opportunity to meet either individually or in groups," she explained.
"The entire point is that the board, management and the union are all ready to work together to solve whatever issues we have. That’s what this university is about. We are not here to endure problems."
Asked whether the board and management recognise the union’s shop stewards, she said they did. She added that the university board also recognised Danny Ramchandani and Valerie Gitterson-Pantophlet as its representatives to represent the board in meetings with the union.
Among the main concerns of the workers are salary increases, their pension, insurance and remuneration for teaching additional classes.
Other concerns that the staff had highlighted in a letter to Education Commissioner Sarah Wescot-Williams in September last year were about the hiring of family and friends of board members, keeping workers in the dark about important changes at the institution and the bypassing of qualified local personnel for top positions. The workers also said they were irked over a number of changes they said were taking place at the university without their knowledge, a claim that had been denied in earlier reports.