The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

MINISTER of Labour and National Insurance Shane Gibson yesterday called the passage of the labour amendments by Parliament this week “a great place to start”, implying that if re-elected the Christie administration would expand on its labour reform actions.

On the sidelines of a commissioning ceremony for the National Insurance Board’s (NIB) new Carmichael Road full-service office, Mr Gibson lamented the government’s inability to complete its full slate of labour reforms as promised before the 2012 general election.

The Golden Gates MP, likening the proposals presented by the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) in the past to an apple, asserted that some situations mandate “small bites” - saying the party avoided “choking” with a view to return and continue its effort.

“You have to take small bites of the apple,” Mr Gibson said. “If you try to take too large of a bite at one time, you have to avoid choking.

“Since coming to office in 2012, we have done a lot about trying to make the labour laws more relevant to what is happening in the country now.

“So, from the renaming of the Sir Randol Fawkes Labour Day parade, to moving the clause that allows for employers to revoke recognition (of unions and representatives), to allowing industrial agreements to be registered by the Registrar of Tribunals which created a bottleneck, to these amendments here which will help to better protect workers and to allow for more communication between employers and their workers or their workers’ representative.”

The labour minister said the Christie administration has spent much of its waning months in office working to prevent ad-hoc terminations from becoming the norm, insisting that Bahamian workers needed a level of protection not provided in earlier legislation.

To that end, Mr Gibson said the changes provided for in the revised Employment Act and Industrial Relations Act reforms will guard against, primarily, “persons waking up one morning to find out that they were made redundant and being forced to decide whether they should take redundancy pay or take gratuity.”

Mr Gibson maintained that his current stint as minister of labour has yielded positive results for Bahamian workers.

“It is good for workers of the country and hopefully when we take another bite at it, we can do some more things to further empower the workers of the country.”

Initially, the government sought to address redundancy pay to employees; options for rehiring in times of redundancies; and the implementation of provisions that protect employees in the event of being made redundant.

Additionally, the government aimed to implement a new 32-week cap for line staff employed up to 12 years with an employer.

The amendment would have required the ‘cap’ to be increased to 32 weeks (16 years) immediately upon enactment of the reforms. And, ultimately, the ‘cap’ for line staff redundancy pay would have been increased to 40 weeks some two years after the amendments are passed.

As for managerial staff, redundancy pay would have gone from the existing 48 weeks/12 months entitlement to 60 weeks, effective immediately, and then to 80 weeks two years after enactment.

Meanwhile, as it related to the Industrial Relations Act, the government was looking to improve issues related to industrial agreements, union relations and matters dealing with the resolution of disputes between unions and employers.

Those proposals resulted to serious push back by private sector employers.

Ultimately, the government relented on its attempt to alter the redundancy ‘cap’, leaving it as originally stated due to uproar.

Addressing that push back yesterday, Mr Gibson said he expected everything that came with the process and was prepared for every possible outcome.

He said: “You will always have push back. The thing is, why we have a Tripartite Council is because we always want to have an avenue where all the stakeholders and all the social partners have an opportunity to sit down and discuss these things.”

Mr Gibson added: “Nobody ever gets what they want and so you will find that workers want more and employers want to give less.”

“You will always have employers threatening to downsize and terminate or do whatever they have to do to get their point across, but the idea is to always allow them the opportunity to get feedback from them and keep the dialogue going.”

Many of the issues addressed in these amendments are issues contested by unionists for much of the last decade.

Several observers have suggested that these moves by the government came in response to the mass redundancy carried out by Sandal Royal Bahamian last year, when 600 persons lost their jobs.