Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) of­fi­cial­ly be­gan yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing height­ened protest ac­tion by staff last week.

The OW­TU, which rep­re­sents ad­min­is­tra­tive staff and dai­ly-paid work­ers at the uni­ver­si­ty, had es­ca­lat­ed in­dus­tri­al ac­tion on March 14, when the work­ers marched through the cam­pus to the Teach­ing and Learn­ing Com­plex (TLC) Build­ing, where the uni­ver­si­ty man­age­ment was hold­ing a cam­pus coun­cil meet­ing, de­mand­ing a res­o­lu­tion to over­due wage dis­cus­sions.