BRIEF HISTORY

The Public Service Union has its roots way back in 1922, when a group of alert, efficient and progressive civil servants inaugurated the Civil Service Association.

The Union is proud of those alert people who were able to look around them and realize that in unity there is strength and that for them to meet the colonial masters on any subject in respect to their conditions of service, they had to unite. Today, the Union can boast of being the second oldest in the Caribbean.

Not much was accomplished during those early years, but a change was made in 1963 when the Civil Service Association, encouraged by its Caribbean counterparts, took on the cloak of a fullfledged trade union. The Union became the Public Officers Union. The scope of industrial relations was broadened but business was carried out on almost the same level as before.

In 1968, the Public Service Joint Staff Relations Council was formally set up. To date, this council continues to be the negotiating forum between the Government and its employees.

In 1980, the Public Offices Union introduced changes in its representational structure and offered itself as a body capable of representing all workers who gave public service and not only civil servants. Thus the name of the union was changed to the Public Service Union of Belize.

The Union has strengthened its affiliations to regional and extra-regional bodies. In August of 1991, the Union assumed the presidency of the Caribbean Public Services Association for a period of one year.