The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

ANY plans by The Bahamas Telecommunication Corporation (BTC) to downsize staff would not be supported by Labour Minister Shane Gibson.

BTC has already denied there were plans to make more than 150 workers redundant, which Mr Gibson said he was not aware of.

Mr Gibson said yesterday the government is concerned about the job status of employees who are temporary “indefinitely”.

He said: “They are doing the same work as the permanent employees with no benefits.

“Very low salaries, I think the salaries are somewhere around $300 a week, no medical insurance (and) no pension.

“Hopefully we won’t see them try to reduce the staff numbers any further.”

Last Friday, Bahamas Telecommunications and Public Officers Union (BCPOU) officials and a BTC board member said the company was planning a layoff.

Union President Bernard Evans said the workload on staff members was already too much after the company was privatised and downsized in 2011.

Mr Evans said if such an exercise was planned, the union was preparing to prevent it from happening.

The union has since warned BTC staff to expect downsizing and an outsourcing of labour.

BTC’s CEO Geoff Houston later refuted the claims calling them “erroneous and reckless”.

He said: “Unfortunately, we find ourselves having to take time to address ludicrous and downright false assertions being made by Mr Evans, who we are sure knows better.

“BTC management and staff have been working hard on the transformation of the company – addressing the network issues and seeking to improve customer care.

“And while we are hard at work trying to deliver better service to our customers, we have leadership of our non-management union engaged in what can best be described as mischievous efforts to undermine team morale and to distract from the very important tasks of making things better for our BTC customers and our BTC team members.”