The Grenada Union of Teachers (GUT) and the Public Workers Union (PWU) have been given the nod by the local high court to bring a Class Action Lawsuit against the Keith Mitchell-led government on behalf of all public officers in the country.
This was disclosed by re-elected President of PWU, Rachel Roberts who said that the matter was filed in court recently to try and recover monies that were deducted from the salaries of public officers by government during the impasse in November and December 2018.
Roberts told THE NEW TODAY newspaper that the two unions were successful in getting the court’s permission to represent all their members on the matter.
“…We would be the claimant in the (suit) and … the request for that administrative order was filed by our legal representative Mr. Cajeton Hood on the 6th of March,” she said.
According to Roberts, the unions are confident that a positive response will come from the court matter for the affected workers.
“So, we know we have a strong legal team to represent us in Mr. Cajeton Hood directly on the matter of the deduction of salaries and Mr. Jimmy Bristol actually giving the necessary support to Mr. Hood.
We are confident that we would be successful in that matter and that some sort of resolution will be given to the membership of the Public Workers Union and we hope that this matter would go to the court very quickly,” she said.
Roberts also disclosed that PWU and other Public Sector Unions are preparing to file another matter in court to deal with 25% pension and gratuity issue for public officers.
She accused the Mitchell-led government of resorting to all sorts of scare tactics to frighten public officers from pursuing the matter.
“The Government of Grenada was putting out all kind of negative statements to instill fear in public officers – to say that public officers had no right to a pension, that the government was doing a favour to provide a pension to public officers. We stood united on that cause and we took the decision, a collective decision from the members that we were no longer going to accept the oppressive move of our government, of our employer, and we were going to take that matter to court. Therefore, we are now preparing to file to return pension to public officers”, said the female trade union leader.
The PWU boss stated that both Bristol and Hood are collaborating on this matter and very soon the case will be filed in court.