The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Customs, Immigration & Allied Workers Union (BCIAWU) yesterday urged the Government to “bring closure” to the industrial agreement, dealing with salaries, benefits and allowances, that it has signed off on.

Sloan Smith, the union’s vice-president, said it had been dealing with these issues since it formed in 2010 under the Ingraham administration.

“We formed in 2010, and since then we have been trying to get an agreement. We were successful in 2014 to conclude one document, and since then we have had to file trade disputes on the Government for failure to at least meet with us and seek to bring closure to another agreement,” Mr Smith said.

“Over the past nine months we sought to  cause the Government to simply deal with the issues of salaries, benefits, allowances.”

Mr Smith added that in July 2016, the union and its affiliate body, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), met with Prime Minister Perry Christie, who promised to bring closure to the various issues the union had raised.

“What we find is that having met with the persons he identified in the negotiating team, if we agree on a particular thing we find that the position changes when we go back,” Mr Smith said.

“We thought about a month ago that we would be able to sign an agreement so that the members of Customs and Immigration could benefit from those increases like everyone else, but we found that instead of a document that should have only been about five to seven pages, they sent us 40 pages of things they thought we wanted in an agreement. We, as an executive, find that something is fundamentally wrong with the lead negotiator, who seems to be trying to drag this thing on.”

Mr Smith said an agreement would impact more than 1,200 Customs and Immigrations officers. “

All we are simply saying to them is that what we have agreed to, let’s simply sign off on that and make those monies available to the workers so they can get their money at least by the end of September,” he added.