The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Public Service Union’s (BPSU) president yesterday warned he is preparing to file a trade dispute against the Government over “across the board” complaints that civil servants are not being paid their correct salaries.

John Pinder told Tribune Business he had received complaints from numerous Government agencies where some staff were alleging their salaries were less than the public sector minimum wage of $11,500 per annum, or $210 per week.

“I’ve heard that complaint coming from a number of Government agencies where the Government has not addressed certain situations and ensured the minimum wage is being applied, especially in local government and the School Boards,” the BPSU chief said.

“They’re still paying a number of persons under the minimum required by the Government. I call again, and ask them to comply with the minimum wage requirements.”

Mr Pinder was speaking out after the Auditor-General’s two-year audit of the Department of Social Services, covering the period to end-June 2015, revealed that the Government was in breach of its industrial agreement with the BPSU because four staff members there were earning less than the minimum wage.

Suggesting that the time for action is drawing near, Mr Pinder told Tribune Business: “We’re going to file a trade dispute to ensure persons get what they are entitled to.

“I’m getting a lot of calls from Grand Bahama and Abaco that persons are not being paid the right salaries. It’s across the board.”

Mr Pinder continued: “The Government is in violation of the International Labour Organisation convention as it relates to the exploitation of persons. They’re exploiting these persons.

“They’re in violation of the Minimum Wage Act and in violation of the industrial agreement between the BPSU and the Bahamas Government.

“We’re expecting the Government to address these issues. There are too many things going on. The always say they don’t have the finances available to do these things, but they always find it to spend on what they want, like $7 million for Carnival and $6 million for the IDB conference, rather than paying people what they are entitled to.”

The Auditor-General’s report on the Department of Social Services revealed how the Government was effectively ‘exploiting’ one out of every three staff there, given that they had been recruited via the Government’s Unemployment Assistance Programme but never made into regular public sector employees.

With 172 of the Department’s 515 active employees still waiting to be ‘regularised’ as full-time public service employees, Terrance Bastian and his team warning it would be “egregious” for the Government not to alleviate the “continued unease” of these persons over their status.

Pointing out that their income-earning capability was also being impaired, Mr Bastian suggested the Government was not living up to its obligations to these people.

It would be egregious to not give serious consideration to alleviating the continued unease of these persons as it relates to their employment status,” the Auditor-General’s report said.

“A further implication associated with this practice by the Department of Social Services is that persons on this programme have been limited to almost no movement in salary for years.

“Their right to basic improvements in their economic conditions would have had to be severely castrated, based on the lack of sustained wages growth.”

In response, Mr Pinder told Tribune Business that he and the BPSU had been pressing the Government for five years to ‘regularise’ these Department of Social Services employees - and others in similar situations - into fully-fledged public servants.

“I’ve been asking the Government to regularise these people for more than five years,” he said. “They keep promising me that they’re going to do that, but they never do.”

Apart from ‘regularising’ the 172 as full-time public service staff, the Auditor-General also urged the Department of Social Services to consider “making an allowance for wage restitution for the lack of incremental increases over the years for these employees, taking into account their long and dedicated service to the public service”.

The Government may find this difficult given its financial circumstances, while so-called ‘fiscal hawks’ are likely to question the Department of Social Services’ workforce size, whether staff are giving ‘value for money’ and if they are properly qualified, and whether temporary hires are designed to keep the jobless figures down.

Mr Pinder said the 172 impacted staff were currently not eligible to receive a civil service pension, and added that a Department supposed to be “sympathetic” to disadvantaged and poor Bahamians was not showing the same to its employees.

The BPSU chief added that there was “no set criteria” to determine who qualified for assistance from the Department of Social Services, and said: “It has to do with who you know and the constituency you’re from.”

Mr Pinder also criticised what he described as a lack of succession planning in the department, adding: “The top two persons in the Department of Social Services over the past two years have met the mandatory retirement age.

“These are things that need to be corrected,” he told Tribune Business. “It’s something that the Government needs to take more seriously.”