A pay dispute between workers and management at Duty Free Caribbean that resulted in strike action on Tuesday morning has gone to the Labour Department for resolution.Several workers at Bridgetown Duty Free on Broad Street and at the company’s other locations across the island walked off the job just after 8:30 a.m.General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) Toni Moore, who spoke to media representatives just after 1 p.m. following talks with the striking workers, said the company had reneged on a promise made as part of an agreement with the union to give the employees a lump sum payment last December.“We agreed that there would be a payment – not a wage increase but a lump sum payment – that would be made for the first year of that agreement. What you are seeing here today is evidence that there is a dispute around, not what was agreed but, the fact that the lump sum payment that was agreed for the first year of the agreement that was payable in December, has not been applied,” she explained.Moore said BWU officials had one meeting with the management of Duty Free Barbados since December, but workers were dissatisfied with how that ended, which resulted in the strike action.
