By Vernon Daley, Staff Reporter
Roberts
NATIONAL WORKERS' Union vice-president, Danny Roberts, wants the Auditor-General to be called in to investigate operations at the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC).
Yesterday, he blasted the management of the state-owned bus company as incompetent
and characterised proposed staff cuts at the organisation as victimisation.
He said his union would be writing to Minister of Transport and Works, Robert
Pickersgill, on the matter.
"It may be necessary for the Auditor-General to be brought in," Mr. Roberts
told The Gleaner yesterday.
Another union, the University and Allied Workers Union (UAWU), representing about 80 per cent of the employees, says it will not support proposed staff cuts at the JUTC without prior consultation with workers.
At the same time, UAWU president, Professor Trevor Munroe, acknowledged that staff cuts were "absolutely necessary". He said, however, that these should begin at the management level as the company was top-heavy.
Contacted yesterday, president of the JUTC, Sterling Soares, said he would not make any comment beyond a joint statement issued by himself and the UAWU on the weekend.
According to the release, "the restructuring exercise aims, among other things, to streamline the operation of the service, its depots and buses."
Both unions had separate meetings with the JUTC management on the weekend to
discuss the planned layoffs in addition to the future viability of the company.
"We don't agree with workers being laid off without prior consultation. That has to be reversed by management," Professor Munroe told The Gleaner yesterday.
The weekend meetings looked at recommendations made by Swedish consultants employed by the Ministry of Transport and Works to restructure the organisation.
Coming out of the report, the company reportedly took the decision to send home 300 of its 3,300 employees as a means of throwing a lifeline to the financially troubled company.
Professor Munroe told The Gleaner that between Tuesday and Friday, a series of meetings will be undertaken at the various depots to inform workers about the financial problems of the company, as well as to get their suggestions as to what can be done to improve its situation.
This will be followed by another meeting between the union and management on January 20 to discuss the matter.
Both Professor Munroe and Mr. Roberts contended that incompetent management, especially at the depot level, was one of the major problems hurting the company.
Two of three vice-presidents of the JUTC quit at the end of last year amid a management review of operations there.
Dr. Alton Fletcher, vice-president of human resources, and John Campbell, vice-president of Engineering Services, left the company but the JUTC said they were not forced out.
The audit was ordered by Mr. Soares and painted the company as technically insolvent. Apart from the daily losses of $3.6 million suffered by the JUTC, it found that the negative worth of the company in February 2002 stood at $1.13 billion. This was in addition to an accumulated deficit of $2.63 billion to February 2002 - total revenue that would be collected over 19 months.
