Its members are non-supervisory personnel and include fire-fighters with the Jamaica Fire Brigade, workers at the National Water Commission, non-nursing personnel in the health service, non-teachers in the schools, workers at the National Irrigation Commission and government employees in the 13 Parish Councils.
After a series of labor uprisings, colonial British authorities passed a reform law in December 1938 legalizing trade unionism in Jamaica.
[2] BITU and TUC quickly elevated the wages of some manual laborers to a point where they were at the same level or even higher than clerical workers in local government.
When white-collar workers employed by the city of Kingston began demanding wage increases, the colonial government set up a one-man commission to make recommendations.
The white-collar workers consulted with Alexander Bustamante, Noel Nethersole and Frank Hill—leaders of the nascent Jamaican labor movement—on what to do.
Taylor fervently believed in industrial unionism, and quickly joined with other militant elements in the branch to push for expansions in the definition of membership.
JALGO, BITU and other unions representing 250,000 members (roughly 10 percent of the island's population) engaged in a four-day general strike to win higher wages.
Many members of the Fire Brigade refused to end their JALGO memberships, and in 1990 the act was amended to restore the right to join the union.
The Junior Doctors Association, which represented residents and interns in the Jamaican health system, had threatened to strike.
E127/2000, decided July 12, 2000), the Supreme Court of Civil Appeal ruled that the injunction was indeed void for the reasons set forth by the association.
The government imposed a wage freeze on public sector unions in February 2004 as part of its effort to rein in inflation.
But after prices surged 13 percent in last 10 months of 2004, BITU announced it was pulling out of the "Memorandum of Understanding" (MoU, the government's collective bargaining agreement with public-sector unions).
JALGO General-Secretary Davis-Whyte refused to withdraw from the MoU, helping save the agreement and leading to improved relations with the government.
[9] But six months later, JALGO and two other public employee unions were forced to strike the National Water Commission to increase salaries (which averaged 28 percent below market).