The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

and KHRISNA VIRGIL

PRIME Minister Perry Christie yesterday criticised last week’s terminations of 190 Crystal Palace workers by Baha Mar as “unfair” and said the Government needed to give hotel staff greater protection in future Heads of Agreements negotiated with foreign developers.

Mr Christie suggested the workers had been victims of the $3.5bn mega resort’s delayed opening from next month, when the developer had anticipated that several hundred graduates from its training programmes this month would go straight into work at the new hotels, to next year.

With the opening now scheduled for the Spring, Baha Mar would have been left with a bloated workforce and wage bill, and no income to support it, without the redundancies.

Meanwhile the Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union (BHCAWU) said yesterday that industrial action is not being ruled out as union officials continue to lobby for the rights of the dismissed workers. Darren Woods, the Union’s vice president, said the organisation would remain quiet on the direction they intend to take until it had a better understanding of the outcome of talks between the government and Baha Mar officials.

The Prime Minister, speaking during a Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants seminar, hinted that the Government had found itself between not wanting to offend a developer on which it has pinned its hopes for economic revival while being upset about the lay-offs and the way those affected have been treated.

“The company anticipated that they would be opening in December, and they were carrying a lot of people on the payroll; walking around, probably making minimum wages, but nevertheless on their payroll,” Mr Christie said. “After this month they are graduating several hundred people who are going on their payroll. That is what they argue. For us the great difficulty is that is so unfair when people, having given the best of their services, and are still capable of giving service, are dismissed.

“We know how difficult it is, based on past experiences, for people of a certain age to be able to get a job back in the industry. Government must certainly know that they are dealing with a decision that has a permanent impact on people. We must be as strong as we can in dealing with this.

“The challenge I have found is that when we have these agreements, and we are arguing that it does not validate that kind of decision, the difficulty is what do you do. There are incentives you provide, but the difficulty in rolling back incentives is that you hurt the development and the people. This is a real teachable moment for the country and I would like for us to do our very best to help the persons that are affected.

“That’s what we are in the process of doing. The Ministry of Labour met with representatives of Baha Mar and the Attorney General, and we will continue with that. We have to be able to learn from this process and put better and stronger protections in place for people in this industry,” he said.

Robert Sands, Baha Mar’s senior vice-president of government and external affairs, confirmed the developer met with the Government yesterday. He said more meetings were scheduled, but refused to provide details.

Mr Woods told The Tribune that the BHCAWU was waiting to be briefed on that meeting. “The government has made certain utterances (regarding suing Baha Mar for breaching a heads of agreement) but we don’t know for sure what they will do. So at this point, the union is not ruling out anything. Those plans I won’t discuss.”

On Friday, union president Nicole Martin, responding to the mass layoff, said it was time for the government to stop spanking foreign companies on the wrist and instead “take out the belts”.

Ms Martin spoke to reporters moments after a two-hour meeting with Prime Minister Perry Christie at his office about the mass firing. She said neither the union nor the employees had been forewarned.

At the time she said it was possible that the Christie administration would take legal action against Baha Mar for breaching clauses laid out in a heads of agreement.

She said: “We are asking the government to do what is necessary to cause this employer to fall within the terms of (the heads of agreement). We know that the employer is getting everything – or seems to be getting everything – that this agreement calls for. But in the case of us, the Bahamian people and the workers here, we are not getting (what we should).

“Our attorney tried to get an emergency injunction, (but) that failed because we are not parties to that agreement. So if there is to be any legal movement it has to come from the government. The Prime Minister has assured us that his people are going to do everything that they need to do within the next few hours to make contact. They see the value in the union’s position and they are going to do what they need to do to have the company come to the table and to have some discussions.”