The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL


TRIBUNE STAFF REPORTER

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

FORTY thousand students across The Bahamas were dismissed at noon yesterday after more than 90 percent of the country’s school administrators joined rare industrial action at the start of the new school term — but hours later the Supreme Court ordered union members back to work and barred them from continuing the strike.


Justice Darron Ellis granted an interim injunction sought by the Minister of Education and the Attorney General against the Bahamas Educators Managerial Union, restraining BEMU, its officers and members from taking part in any strike or other industrial action. 

The order also requires any BEMU officer or member employed by the Ministry of Education to return to his or her designated workplace when scheduled and prohibits members from taking sick leave without a valid sick certificate.


Union officials and members are also prohibited from inducing, inciting or intimidating ministry employees in a way that impedes them from attending work or encourages them not to report. 

The parties are due to return before Justice Ellis at 10am tomorrow. The union is entitled to apply to have the interim order varied or discharged.


The court intervention came after BEMU invoked its strike certificate yesterday, with president Stephen McPhee estimating that more than 90 percent of the union’s 500-plus members participated in industrial action over longstanding promotions, administrative vacancies, its expired industrial agreement and other grievances.


The Ministry of Education initially activated a contingency plan, and Education Minister Chester Cooper said most of the country’s 161 public schools remained open and operational despite some being left without administrators.


By noon, however, the ministry ordered every public school in New Providence, Grand Bahama and the Family Islands dismissed, telling parents and guardians to collect their children and await further information on reopening.


The disruption came at the beginning of the school term and followed an emergency BEMU membership meeting on Monday.


Mr McPhee said more than 200 members participated online, with about 14 voting against industrial action and a little over 200 supporting it.


“We have begged, we have pleaded,” Mr McPhee said. “As of this day, we have invoked our right.”

He rejected suggestions that the action amounted to a sick-out, saying members were exercising their rights under a strike certificate issued by the Ministry of Labour, Public Service and National Insurance.


Mr McPhee said BEMU had spent about five months seeking to resolve its concerns and was most recently informed that its next available appointment with the government would be September 14.

“We are saying we cannot. We cannot,” he said. “We’re asking you to come to sit and to listen to us, the leaders, your arm, your extended arm, on how we can resolve these most pressing matters.”


Mr Cooper described the decision to take industrial action as “precipitous”, “disruptive” and “disappointing”.


He disputed the union’s claim that the government had failed to engage it, saying he met Mr McPhee in August and that the union president subsequently held a two-hour meeting with the permanent secretary and director.


“It seems counterintuitive that if there is a short supply of administrators in the classroom,” Mr Cooper said, “that anyone would advise the remaining administrators to remove themselves from the school during a time when we are seeking normalcy.”


Mr Cooper said the union submitted a list of concerns around August 24 and that he asked for time to work with the Public Service Commission and other government agencies, with discussions expected to resume on September 14.


“Some of them are legacy issues,” he said, “and therefore, in my considered view, and anyone, any reasonable person’s considered view, waiting another two weeks to come back to the table with resolution would be reasonable.”


BEMU’s grievances include promotion cases dating as far back as 2016 and 2018, administrative vacancies and an industrial agreement that expired in June 2025.


The union said it submitted a proposal for a new agreement but has yet to receive a counterproposal from the government.


Mr McPhee said some members have spent years performing the duties of higher offices without receiving substantive appointments or the corresponding remuneration.


He again highlighted an additional $58.33 per month BEMU says some members are entitled to upon promotion.


“These officers are working presently in these posts,” Mr McPhee said. 

“These are not promotions in most cases that we’re asking you to go interview for. In most cases, these persons for the past few years have been functioning. They can’t get the $58.33, and we’re saying unacceptable.”


BEMU has also objected to what it calls “unconstitutional postings”, alleging that some members have been required to perform duties in higher offices without formal appointment by the Public Service Commission.


Mr McPhee welcomed the government’s recent promotion of 36 people but questioned why older cases remained unresolved.


“If you just promoted 36 persons in the same system,” he said, “how do you expect the person from 2018 to continue every day to show up under new promoted persons?”


The union circulated a list identifying what it described as vacancies for principals, vice principals, district officers and technical education officers throughout New Providence and the Family Islands.

Mr McPhee stressed that BEMU’s membership extends beyond individual school administrators and includes subject secretaries responsible for examinations, education officers, technical education officers and district superintendents.


BEMU had been expected to meet Mr Cooper and other government representatives on Wednesday after intervention by the government’s Labour Relations Unit.


Mr McPhee credited LRU chief negotiator Bernard Evans with intervening in the dispute, saying discussions continued beyond 1am yesterday before the union was informed that the minister was prepared to meet.


He stopped short of saying industrial action would automatically end after those talks, saying any government response would be taken back to BEMU’s membership.


The interim injunction now prohibits the union and its members from continuing that action pending further order of the court.

Meanwhile, the Bahamas Union of Teachers is separately weighing industrial action in its salary dispute with the government.
BUT president Belinda Wilson said 80.5 per cent of members who responded to a union survey rejected the government’s salary counterproposal, while 84.8 per cent supported industrial action if the union’s deadline expires without an agreement.
That deadline is midnight tonight.