The Tribune

A trade union leader yesterday said he preferred full severance packages for furloughed workers to the Government extending unemployment benefits until the end of February.

Obie Ferguson, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) president, told Tribune Business it might be "in the best interest" of workers who have been temporarily laid-of due to COVID-19 to receive their termination pay given that some may go 15 months without working due to the extension of the Government's emergency powers to May 23.

He added that while extending government-funded unemployment benefits of $100 per week is “not unreasonable, I think if it is for a longer period it may be in the best interest to have the redundancy".

“I prefer the redundancy option if the extension is over two months, because they really need the money," Mr Ferguson said of furloughed workers. "They don’t have any money. It is well possible that this situation will certainly go on beyond February, and if you had done the redundancy they - under the new legislation (Employment Act) they have the right to first preference" when staff are recalled.

“The thing is there is no income coming in to these people’s homes, and I'm saying that while my gut feeling is that it's best for them to hang on with no certainty as to when the emergency orders are going to be relaxed, it makes it difficult for them to survive when they have no jobs," Mr Ferguson said. "But if they get redundancy pay that may very well bring some comfort, both psychological and economic.”

Mr Ferguson spoke after the Prime Minister, in yesterday's House of Assembly debate on the emergency powers extension, confirmed that unemployment benefits have been extended for a further month until end-February 2021.

Indicating that further extensions are likely, Dr Hubert Minnis said: "We have extended the unemployment benefit to the end of February, and depending on circumstances it will possibly be extended again, as we have done with food assistance."

The emergency powers extension also upholds the suspension of Employment Act provisions, which normally mandate that employers pay full severance to any worker sent home for 90 days or more, until June 23.

Mr Ferguson said these moves “obviously” block the redundancy pathway for workers, adding: “I have repeated over and over, and especially every Labour Day, that we need a redundancy fund to be established to deal with these types of situations.

"These types of things you have to build into your country’s economic structures so that it will be able to assist people when these types of things happen, even if it is only $1 a week in contributions. People can afford that.”