Locks Changed, No Letter, No Access: People's Union says PM Browne Attacking ONDCP Workers while Shielding Director

The People's Union has mounted a forceful public defense of workers at the Office of National Drug and Money Laundering Control Policy (ONDCP), rejecting Prime Minister Gaston Browne's characterisation of the staff as underperforming and revealing fresh allegations that two shop stewards are being victimised following months of industrial action over unsafe working conditions.

Appearing on Observer Radio's Voice of the People with host Adrian Williams on Monday, a delegation from the union — President Ralph Potter, General Secretary Andie Stephen, Vice President Garry Benjamin, Senior Industrial Relations Officer Peter Leonard — was joined by Rono Christopher, a senior investigator and supervisor with almost 30 years of service at the ONDCP.

The broadcast follows a bruising week of exchanges between the union and the Prime Minister. Browne, speaking at a meeting with the heads of the country's law-enforcement and national-security agencies, described the ONDCP as an institution "becoming irrelevant" and delivered an ultimatum to Director Lieutenant Colonel Edward Croft: "If you do not get your act together, I'm going to disband the ONDCP." He later accused some employees of "cheating the system" by collecting full salaries while allegedly refusing to work full days and warned the agency's responsibilities could be transferred to a specialised unit within the Royal Police Force of Antigua and Barbuda. The People's Union responded with a blistering six-page statement branding both PM Browne and Director Croft as "liars."

Half-day Arrangement Originated with Government, Union Says

Central to the union's rebuttal is the origin of the reduced working hours the Prime Minister has publicly criticised. President Ralph Potter told listeners the arrangement was not devised by the workers at all, but was recommended roughly seven years ago by the Minister of Labour, Attorney General Sir Steadroy Benjamin, to limit employees' exposure to mould and other hazards in the building — on the understanding that the ONDCP would take corrective measures. Those measures, President Potter said, were never taken, and workers continued in those conditions for about seven years before approaching the People's Union when their bargaining agent failed to respond.

ONDCP senior investigator and supervisor Rono Christopherfurther repudiated the PM's claims, explaining that the so-called half day was in fact a two-shift system. "It's not a half day specifically. It's two shifts, so you still end up with eight hours," he said.

President Potter also cited ILO Convention 155, ratified by Antigua and Barbuda, which he said gives workers the right to withdraw from a workplace they reasonably believe poses an imminent risk to their health — a position he said the Deputy Labour Commissioner confirmed in a February meeting attended by three Labour Department officials at Croft's own invitation.

Crucially, President Potter said Permanent Secretary Edson Joseph confirmed in a meeting on Sunday that the union had honoured every agreement made in connection with the industrial action. "Nothing with respect to what has not been done... is on the People's Union. The Permanent Secretary was very clear," President Potter said.

Testing incomplete, Workers back "in good faith"

Christopher, who serves as chief shop steward at the agency, confirmed that the majority of requested renovations have been completed since staff returned to the building on 6 July, including patched openings, replaced mould-affected furniture and a new fire escape window. But he stressed that a final air quality test has not been conducted, and that the last phase of medical testing for staff — who have endured nearly nine years of exposure — remains outstanding.

"It is good faith on the employees' part," Benjamin said, noting that under the original agreement staff were entitled to return home when testing was not completed by 31 July, but the union chose not to pull them out. The union has said workers will not return to full hours until the final stage of medical testing is completed and a proper report is issued by the Chief Medical Officer and has questioned how the Prime Minister could declare employees medically cleared when some have not received their own results.

Locked Out: IT Staff Allege Targeted Victimisation

The most striking revelations of the programme concerned Benjamin himself. He told listeners that when staff returned on 6 July, he and his sole colleague in the IT department discovered the locks to their department had been changed and they have been denied access ever since — despite receiving no suspension, reprimand or correspondence of any kind. When the union queried the lockout, Croft reportedly said a "special project" was underway in the department, being conducted by an outside consultant the two IT professionals have never met.

General Secretary Stephen said the two men were handed transfer letters on their first day back, moving them to a department outside their job descriptions, training and resources — this despite the Permanent Secretary repeatedly cautioning during negotiations that no worker should become a casualty of the industrial action. "Gary had a target on his back from the onset," she said, attributing it to his role as shop steward and his outspokenness during the five-month dispute.

Stephen further alleged that non-IT personnel are now working in the IT department — the nerve centre of an intelligence agency handling highly sensitive data — while the trained IT staff sit at home. Benjamin said he would only accept responsibility for the department's systems up to the start of the industrial action.

Christopher, the union disclosed, is now also facing transfer — a move that came, he said, one month after he became deputy shop steward. The veteran investigator, who told listeners his casework has contributed EC$181 million to the Consolidated Fund, said he has not been offered training since June 2012, has been repeatedly passed over for promotion by officers he mentored, and has been blocked from a transfer out of the agency for nearly 12 years despite winning a case at the Labour Department. "I prefer to speak the facts and have the public weigh in," he said. "If you were in that situation, what would you do, and how would you feel?"

"Who holds the director accountable?"

The union laid responsibility for the agency's dysfunction squarely at Croft's feet. Benjamin recounted a meeting at which the Prime Minister personally arranged resources and contacted a contractor to remedy the building — only for the director to alter the scope of works, constructing new upstairs offices instead of completing the agreed remediation, with no follow-up inspection by the Government to his knowledge.

"The director is to be blamed for more than 90 percent of the issues happening at ONDCP," Stephen charged. "The director has been able to have free rein... treating staff like crap, and at the end of the day you're throwing the staff under the bus."

Christopher also pushed back on the Prime Minister's questioning of the agency's operational output, explaining that the ONDCP is an intelligence-led organisation in which officers act only on case files disseminated through the chain of command. The last dissemination for an interdiction, he said, came in 2018. "To say that the officers do not want to work, that the officers are lazy, that is not the case," he said. "Your tax dollars are being spent on a department that wants to do the work. It's just that the disseminations haven't been coming."

Broader Warning to Workers

Stephen revealed that when ONDCP staff requested a meeting with the Prime Minister — who is the minister responsible for the agency — his response was that he would not speak to them until they returned to work for eight hours. She described a "weak labour system" in which neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister of Labour has engaged the parties, and warned that "workers in this country, especially government workers, are in a dark place."

Leonard was blunter still, dismissing the Prime Minister's rhetoric as "posturing" by an administration under pressure over crime. Invoking the ONDCP's own motto — taking the profit out of crime — he asked pointedly: "Who is profiting in this country from crime?" He called for the restoration of a standalone labour ministry, arguing that industrial relations have suffered since the portfolio was merged.

Despite the escalating war of words, the union has said it remains willing to meet with the Government and ONDCP management to resolve the dispute. The agency employs close to 60 workers.