Blz: Sweetness on slow

Belize Workers Union has initiated a go-slow in the face of what it calls intransigence on the part of Belize Sugar Industries. According to B.W.U. Chairman, Rene Gomez, the B.S.I. workers have requested a ten percent wage increase retroactive to January first, 2004 when their old contract expired. B.S.I. has responded with a proposal for a one-year wage freeze, citing four consecutive years of losses, low world prices, and the bleak prospect of a likely end to preferential treatment on the European market. The go-slow instituted at the Tower Hill factory has workers performing their duties at a twenty-five percent reduction in speed. "If they don't move, we won't move," says union chairman Rene Gomez, who told News 5 that B.S.I. has not even made a counter