The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Digicel is unconcerned about trade union hostility towards its bid for the Bahamas’ second cellular licence, a senior executive telling Tribune Business: “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Frank O’Carroll, Digicel’s head of business development, said the mobile communications specialist had “never” lost a day to industrial unrest or worker strikes in its 15-year history.

He added that the group’s working environment, and employee-management relations, were such that trade unions had never been needed in most of Digicel’s 32 markets.

Yet Mr O’Carroll emphasised that Digicel did employ unionised workers in the French-speaking countries of Guadeloupe and French Guiana, and that the group would respect the right of Bahamians to join a trade union.

He was responding after Bernard Evans, president of the Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union (BCPOU), last week said he and the union would be opposed to both Digicel and Cable Bahamas winning the second cellular licence.

The BCPOU, which represents Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) and ZNS line staff, considers both companies ‘anti-union’ and, in Cable Bahamas’ case, has grown increasingly frustrated over its 20-year inability to penetrate its walls via an industrial agreement.

Mr Evans and the union are likely concerned over a loss of influence, and further membership erosion as BTC’s financial performance is hit by the second cellular operator’s entrance.

Mr O’Carroll, emphasising that Digicel had “thankfully never had the need” for trade unions in the workplace, added: “Digicel, in 15 years, has never had a day off from strikes.”

He added that “staff participation” was part of the group’s culture, with bi-annual company surveys and monthly meetings between workers and management a regular part of life.

“We wouldn’t be concerned,” Mr O’Carroll told Tribune Business of Mr Evans’s comments. “We would respect the right everyone has to be in a union. That’s a bridge we’ll cross when we come to it.”

He suggested that Digicel would have little difficulty ‘Bahamianising’ its operations should it win the second cellular licence.

Around 98 per cent of staff in every Digicel market come from that country, and its management team was 100 per cent local in eight out of its 32 territories.

“They are some of our better performing markets, I’m glad to say,” Mr O’Carroll said.

For potential staff, Mr O’Carroll said Digicel was targeting Bahamians living and working abroad who wanted to return home.

And he said “a fantastic amount” of persons in the Bahamas, including BTC employees, had approached him to wish Digicel well and pass copies of their CVs to him.