The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

A few days ago, the massive resort development, Baha Mar, announced that it had laid off 190 workers from its Crystal Palace facility, some having been a part of the “family” for up to 20 years. Word is that a number of workers will shortly be laid off from the Casino element.

These dismissals occurred against the background that the company touts that it is “creating new jobs” amounting to between 4,000 and 7,000, depending on who is talking at what event. Of course, no one mentions that 2,500 of these new jobs will replace the jobs lost when the company “retrenched” and, subsequently, closed facilities during the period leading up to construction and during construction. Of course, working alongside the more than 1,000 Chinese nationals employed by the Chinese State owned China Construction as construction workers building Baha Mar Company are a few dozen Bahamian construction workers and security staff.

All of this casually takes place in our country over and over again. Every time large layoffs happen, organised labour makes public noise, and others join in, promising that “this has got to stop”. But, it never does.

This is all carried out by a population which claims, in its majority, that it is “Christian”. Seems they forgot to read what Jesus Christ is reported, in the Bible’s Gospels, to have said about Love for one another. Particular reference is made to Matthew 25: 31- 46 (choose your translation). Clearly, even a casual read of the teaching of Jesus Christ reveals that He taught that People, yes even poor People, were to be treated with respect.

During November 2010, as part of a reflection on “Leadership”, I offered, for discussion, the following few paragraphs which posits that workers were being robbed of ownership of their jobs by a callous set of players who worship the god “money” as being paramount in any matter. Unfortunately, this false god still holds sway.

“Job Ownership

“During early 2009, a large resort operation claimed that it had to reduce its cost of labour by some ten per cent as a result of falloff in business and reasonable projections for a continuation of this lower level for some months. Their solution, following consultation with the government and with the Hotel Union was to dismiss ten per cent of the staff. The government accepted this and the union accepted this. The problem was, apparently, a need to reduce costs by ten per cent and the solution was to take jobs away from one thousand people. No regard to the fact, in the view of some social thinkers, that the worker in fact owned the job and was in a cooperative investment with the company’s financial investors. The company and the government do not believe that the worker owns the job. The union probably does not believe that the worker owns the job. Worst of all, the worker himself does not believe that he owns the job. In all their minds someone was doing the worker a favour when the employment started so the favour has just come to an end. No regard to the loss of a major linchpin in a personal sense of worth. No regard to the long term negative effect on the wider community.

“During short-term business falloffs, the company and union always worked out an arrangement for what was called ‘short weeks’. All of a sudden the concept is thrown away. The government supported this loss of jobs for the resort because less money was going to be coming in, but it did not apply the concept to its 20 members of cabinet even though it accepted that the government was going to be receiving less money to the Treasury because of the same falloff of business.

“Least there is any doubt. I believe that the right thing for the company, government and union to have done was to share all the facts with the whole complement of staff and work out a programme of nine days work in each ten day work period for all staff while permitting any who would have liked to take retirement or redundancy as appropriate to do so. The government would have offered financial support for the carrying costs; the union would have agreed to review expensive contract matters with a view to requesting its members to consider some appropriate givebacks. This would have been the socially responsible thing to do. This would have been an opportunity to demonstrate a government and the economy serving the people and not the other way around.”

Ultimately, no one really cared. Excuses were made for why it all had to happen. The same excuses will be made in the Baha Mar dismissals.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Unless, of course, people of good will- decent people- insist on “doing unto others as they would have done to them”.

Thank you for your time and interest.

PHILIP P SMITH

Nassau,

November 14, 2014.