By AVA TURNQUEST
Tribune Chief Reporter
aturnquest@tribunemedia.net
Bahamas Electrical Workers Union President Paul Maynard yesterday charged that the nearly $5 million paid in overtime to workers this year was well-deserved and hard-earned.
Mr Maynard explained that workers had no choice but to take on intense workloads to compensate for the archaic equipment and a shortage of specialised staff.
He added that workers tend to have a shortened life span as a result of their duties.
“We work overtime because we have no other choice but to work overtime,” Mr Maynard said, “if we don’t work overtime it would be even worse in terms of the outages,” he said.
“It’s not as simple as just hiring more people, that isn’t practical because you still have to pay. You just don’t train someone to work in a highly specialised position over night; you can’t just put someone in the field to go on the line or go in an engine to fix it, that takes four to five years to get to the level we’re at.”
He added: “A guy who works in distribution all their lives at BEC, when they retire, in about two years they’re dead. It takes a toll on us: it’s not easy.”
Mr Maynard said if given the chance many workers would opt out of overtime because of the strain it places on their family and personal life. The union president was responding to reports that BEC paid out nearly $5m in overtime for the first nine months of this year, according to documents obtained by The Tribune.
Five workers received more than $50,000 in overtime for the period ending in September, with one mechanical maintenance worker paid $14,060.15 for the month of April.
“They earned it,” he said, “they earned every penny of it. You know what it is to sit on top of a hot engine for six to seven hours at a time and you can’t move? Do you know what it is to go down in the engine, and be in there for four to five hours? You know what it is to do that kind of work, when you get home covered in grease, all the Diesel in your pores?
That’s earned overtime, that’s earned by blood sweat and tears. Sometimes you have to fix a part and you don’t even have replacement parts, you have to make up parts.”
He maintained that the union has supported schedule rostering for new employees, however, he added that the process was not an easy fix for established workers.
He accused the corporation’s chairman, Leslie Miller, of being mischievous or misinformed in his attempt to mischaracterise a complex matter.
Comments
proudloudandfnm 9 years, 11 months ago
BULLSHIT
GrassRoot 9 years, 11 months ago
well, no one talks about efficiency here. If the worker sits on the hot engine for 6 hours and gets nothing accomplished because, he either is not efficient himself or the engine is beyond repair, he still clocks for 6 hours.....
empathy 9 years, 11 months ago
Remember these are engineers and mechanics, worldwide they are highly sort after and similarly paid. I have no problem with highly technical, intellectually challenging jobs being compensated accordingly. That said BEC is an economic failure, as such their cost of doing business needs to be reduced, if workers are costly then you may need to have less of them. Problematic Human Resource issues are pervasive in the government/ government corporation agencies. That said the main problem with them all is that they are "public" vs private, and there is lack of competition. Any fixes attempted without addressing those two issues, including friggin' around with unionized workers is just tinkering around the ages ;-(
duppyVAT 9 years, 11 months ago
Who trains BEC engineers, and mechanics??????????? Most of the BEC workers donot even have a degree, some are only high school graduates .... so dont call them highly trained ......... not the ones that I know.
jamaicaproud 9 years, 11 months ago
Many technicians in the world don't have a degree, or a associates, but wouldn't you agree you just cannot pick people off the street and have them running the system? I used to design controls that control such things, its not as easy as it sounds.
goodone 9 years, 11 months ago
It is alot of money paid out for overtime. I think we really have to think about it as if what if we were those workers, would we deserve it? All that hard work. Being away from your family because you have to isn't easy. Personally I think since jobs are so scarce in The Bahamas maybe individuals should go into electrical training. BEC is stating they don't have much skilled persons. Why study to be a photographer when there is a field in BEC waiting for you. Figuratively speaking that is. Don't be mad they are getting paid alot for their hard work. You rather jump for joy for an individual thinking of a random number in seconds or overnight in their sleep and potentially winning the same amount that hard worker made. Man the people of the Bahamas need some serious value check.
ThisIsOurs 9 years, 11 months ago
He added: “A guy who works in distribution all their lives at BEC, when they retire, in about two years they’re dead. It takes a toll on us: it’s not easy.”
This man is brain dead, there's no other explanation. He is telling me that over the last 20 years, he has had men working in distribution who die two years after retirement all because of the heavy workload and he's done nothing to foster either training of additional staff or improvement in hiring practices? Stop stuffing the place with morons from the campaign. Hire competent people who can actually handle the job. Maybe then you wont have just 2 overworked people in distribution dying every year.
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