The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) has given technicians an extra week to review their new employment terms, lifting - at least temporarily - its threat to terminate 70 workers.

Robert Farquharson, director of labour, yesterday confirmed that he had intervened in the dispute between BTC and the technicians whose jobs it had previously outsourced.

"The Department of Labour has intervened in the dispute," he confirmed.

"BTC has given consideration to extend the period whereby the employees have the option to sign new terms and conditions of employment. The company has indicated that they would like these employees to remain on the job, and so they are flexible in giving them additional time to seek further legal advice."

Mr Farquharson said the workers had been given a seven-day extension to review the terms and conditions of the proposed contract, following claims that BTC had threatened to terminate their employment if they did not sign by today.

The dispute has its origins in the "involuntary" separation packages taken by technicians in 2015, which resulted in their status changing from BTC employees to contractors. Following their outsourcing, they complained two years later that they received no paid vacation days, resulting in a dispute that went to the Department of Labour.

BTC, though, described the packages accepted by the technicians as voluntary after it took measures to position itself to "effectively and efficiently provide services to the consumer". The outsourcing is likely to have been a mechanism to enable the carrier to slash costs, and better prepare itself for increased competition, by shedding the benefits it would have to provide for direct BTC employees.

Tensions leading to the latest dispute appear to have been brewing for at last a week. Bernard Evans, the Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union's (BCPOU) president, had accused BTC of going back on the arrangement previously agreed, including with the BCPOU, with the technicians.

He explained that the workers were told to form themselves into a company to bid on a Request for Proposal (RFP) to be issued by BTC, with the union negotiating a "right of first refusal" for those staff if they made an offer.

Mr Evans, though, said BTC was now "not going in that direction", with an RFP exercise having been launched but never concluded. He added that, instead, it wanted to renegotiate the outsourced workers' long-term contracts so that it became a 'pay for performance' arrangement.

"The outside plant, the outside contract workers set up their own company, setting aside some money and time investing in that opportunity," he told Tribune Business. "The company has changed that to where they're seeking a collective agreement with the outside plant workers.

"Once they left the company, the salaries they are receiving are pretty much the same. What BTC is saying now is that they want to renegotiate those long-term contracts on a pay for performance basis - you did 10 jobs, you get paid for 10 jobs."

Mr Evans subsequently said the technical contractors had reengaged the BCPOU to oversee negotiations on BTC's new contract proposal. The company, in a statement last Tuesday night, confirmed that effective November 1 it would be introducing what it called "new entrepreneurial opportunities for technical contractors".

"Essentially, contractors will now have more flexibility and will be able to focus on results-oriented support for business in areas including network maintenance and development, installation and repairs," the company's statement read.

Mr Evans told The Tribune on Monday that the company had threatened to terminate the contracts of more than 70 workers if they did not sign the agreement by yesterday.

Speaking with Tribune Business yesterday, Mr Evans said: "I had spoken to the Minister to ask him to intervene to grant the extension. The document is a legal document. It took them about a month or two to put that together, and to give these guys a few days to respond is ridiculous.

"We were hopeful that they would grant an extension, a minimum of seven working days, so that they could go through the contract."