The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Staff Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

CITY Markets may not be able to compensate former employees for their pension plans, Labour Minister Shane Gibson said yesterday.

Mr Gibson also confirmed that the 165 employees in New Providence will have to wait until the sale of the food store chain has been finalised before they can receive the more than $3 million owed to them in redundancy payments.

He added that it was also unclear whether or not the company will be able to fully compensate workers despite assurances from City Markets officials that all returns from the sale will go towards satisfying obligations to employees.

“I am confident that (employees) are owed monies, whether or not they will be paid it’s difficult for me to say,” Mr Gibson said.

“At the end of the day that responsibility is that of their former employer, (City Markets) have given me assurances that all of the monies collected for the sale of the business would go back into paying all of the obligations and so to the extent of whether they will receive full or partial compensation I’m not sure.”

Mr Gibson said he was unfamiliar with how the pension plan had been set up, but noted that it was a separate matter from the redundancy payments.

“In the case of the redundancy payments, they’re still waiting on the sale of the business,” Mr Gibson said, “whereas in the case of the pension, I’m not sure whether they’re able to pay all of their obligations based on the assets that they would hold in the pension plan at this time.”

He added: “My understanding is that the pension plan would have some assets and some investments that they are looking for certain returns to be able to dispose of certain investments that they have in order to raise money to pay their obligations.”

Concerns were raised regarding the security of the pension fund just days after workers were told the financially struggling food chain would close and was in talks with a buyer.

In April, employee spokespersons threatened to file charges against primary owner Mark Finlayson in the New York City Supreme Appellate court over the release of millions in unpaid pension money tied to the company’s sale negotiations. The pension fund is reportedly governed by United States law as it was initiated by US grocer Winn Dixie in 1983.

Despite assurances from Mr Finlayson that the pension funds remained intact, it was reported that the fund was used to purchase land and store equipment.

Yesterday, Mr Gibson said the City Markets ordeal and related incidents has highlighted the need for additional legislation to provide greater protection to workers (see story on page 3).

“Coming out of these discussions, we talked about possibility of putting some additional legislation in place to protect employees from these types of situations,” Mr Gibson said.

“It’s very disheartening to employees when they would have worked for such a long time and they have monies that are due to them – not asking for anything in addition – just what is due to them, and they’re having a difficulty collecting it.

“The former employees are very anxious to have these matters behind them,” he added. “I believe that we are closer now than we have been in the past, hopefully we will see some movement in terms of payment very soon. The employees, some of whom have been working for City Market for 25 or 30 years, are only looking for what is rightfully due to them. So hopefully as soon as their former employer is in a position to compensate them, they would do so.