Company given ultimatum

The Construction, Energy, and Timber Workers Union (CETWUF) has given Energy Fiji Limited (EFL) until March 10, to respond to its log of claims.

The claims had been pending since 2020.

The ultimatum was given after a meeting on Tuesday at the EFL Navutu, Lautoka depot in the presence of company chief executive officer Hasmukh Patel.

It is understood that the next meeting will take place on March 16, at the same venue where both parties have agreed to revisit and negotiate outstanding claims from 2016 with collective agreements.

Union national secretary John Paul said it was a fruitful discussion where a decision was made for a timeline to be set to negotiate over the pending log of claims.

“We have a couple of years’ claims that were pending that we discussed,” Mr Paul said.

“We wanted to move ahead positively and we had serious discussions. It’s been a long time and things have changed. For us, we want to see through this change. We can move forward and bring an agreement.”

Mr Patel said the aim of the meeting was to come to an agreement.

“The objective is to come to some agreement. There had been some issues that we had agreed upon some time ago, but there were some issues that we have not agreed upon, so we want to revisit them and see if we can come to some agreements,” he said.

There are issues such as their working conditions, workers should get this, workers should get that, so those kinds of things, we call them a log of claims so some we have agreed upon and some are outstanding.”