The Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers' Trade Union (SWW­TU) yes­ter­day an­nounced suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of ne­go­ti­a­tions with An­gos­tu­ra Ltd. As a re­sult, more than 300 em­ploy­ees, com­pris­ing su­per­vi­so­ry, month­ly-rat­ed and dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers, have been grant­ed a 13 per cent in­crease in wages. The union's ne­go­ti­at­ing team was led by pres­i­dent-gen­er­al Michael An­nisette, and in­clud­ed first-vice pres­i­dent Hu­bert Con­stan­tine, third vice-pres­i­dent An­dre Cruick­shank and as­sis­tant sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Nel­son Sin­nette, with the sup­port of An­gos­tu­ra branch of­fi­cers and shop stew­ards, in­clud­ing branch pres­i­dent Ron­dell Lewis, vice-pres­i­dent Dereck Thomp­son and sec­re­tary Tracey Coombs.

The com­pa­ny's ne­go­ti­at­ing team in­clud­ed Robert Wong, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er for pro­duc­tion and bulk sales; Bri­an La Roche, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and re­cruit­ment man­ag­er; Alana Beaubrun, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of hu­man re­sources; Vidia Dood­nath, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor; and Bri­an Sue, se­nior fi­nance man­ag­er. Com­ment­ing on the set­tle­ment, An­nisette point­ed out: "In ad­di­tion to the 13 per cent wage in­crease, sev­er­al em­ploy­ees will ben­e­fit from an up­ward ad­just­ment in their salaries be­fore the ap­pli­ca­tion of the said wage in­crease.

"The agree­ment al­so pro­vides for in­creas­es in sub­sis­tence, trav­el­ling and shift al­lowances and work­ers with­in the bar­gain­ing unit will al­so ben­e­fit from home re­pair loans, com­put­er loans and in­ter­est-free loans for first-time home­own­ers," he said. "Ca­su­al work­ers will al­so be en­ti­tled to re­tire­ment ben­e­fits and will al­so ben­e­fit from the 13 per cent wage in­crease. "The prin­ci­ples of fair­ness and frank, ma­ture and re­spon­si­ble dis­cus­sions guid­ed the ne­go­ti­a­tions process at all times.

"The 13 per cent wage in­crease set­tle­ment at An­gos­tu­ra, with­out the in­ter­ven­tion of a third par­ty, once again demon­strates and con­firms that where there is a will­ing­ness by both par­ties at the ne­go­ti­a­tions ta­ble to meet and treat in good faith and on the ba­sis of mu­tu­al re­spect and mu­tu­al gain, the foun­da­tion for good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices and ef­fec­tive man­age­ment-work­er re­la­tion­ships, which is the cor­ner­stone of any suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny, will ul­ti­mate­ly pre­vail." An­nis­sette thanked the man­age­ment of An­gos­tu­ra for the pro­gres­sive and in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach that they brought to the ne­go­ti­a­tion ta­ble.