The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A trade union leader yesterday voiced doubts that the Prime Minister will live up “a pre-election commitment” to bring BISX-listed Cable Bahamas to the negotiating table.

Sherry Benjamin, the Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union’s (BCPOU) president, told Tribune Business that she had left a meeting with Philip Davis QC with “more questions than answers” after receiving “no comfort” his administration would make good on this pledge.

However, a spokesman for the Prime Minister, responding on his behalf, yesterday voiced surprise at Ms Benjamin’s account of their meeting the Friday before last. They said Mr Davis encouraged the union to use the potential remedies offered by the law and Supreme Court to bring reluctant employers to negotiate, especially if they had already been recognised as the bargaining agent.

“I met with the Prime Minister two Fridays’ ago,” Ms Benjamin revealed to this newspaper. “That was to discuss the contract worker situation [at BTC] and ask for the Government’s support in getting Cable Bahamas to the table. They’ve been ducking and dodging us. 

“We have bargaining rights for Cable Bahamas, but they are refusing to come to the table to negotiate a contract for the line staff at Cable Bahamas. The Prime Minister made a commitment prior to the election that he would assist in getting Cable Bahamas to the table.

“I was pressing him on that to live up to that commitment to get Cable Bahamas to the table and get a contract for the staff at Cable Bahamas. He didn’t give me any comfort that I can count on them for support, let’s put it like that. I left there with more questions than answers. I told him that just as I said it to you.”

The BCPOU has long maintained that it was recognised as the bargaining agent for Cable Bahamas’ line staff, as required under the Industrial Relations Act, during the first Ingraham administration’s first term in office. That was upheld following a long, arduous Supreme Court battle in which Cable Bahamas was ordered to recognise the union and begin industrial deal talks.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman said he had given Ms Benjamin and the BCPOU a similar message, namely to use Bahamian labour laws to uphold their rights, especially since the last Christie administration had strengthened the provisions dealing with employers who refused to negotiate with recognised bargaining agents.

However, the BCPOU chief yesterday reiterated her seeming disappointment with the meeting’s outcome, saying: “I said: ‘You made the same commitment to me before the election, and after the election comes it’s a different story. I don’t like that. I don’t subscribe to that at all.

“Who do you go to for help? If we call them [Cabinet ministers and MPs] they don’t answer their phones and, if they do, they give you one big song and dance. These are people’s lives you are talking about.”

The then-Opposition Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) signed a pre-election memorandum of understanding with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and National Congress of Trade Unions of The Bahamas (NCTUB), the two umbrella union bodies - one of which the BCPOU is affiliated with - making a number of labour-friendly pledges if elected to office.

Labour concerns in the communications industry were not just confined to Cable Bahamas over the weekend. Robert Farquharson, the Government’s director of labour, would neither confirm nor deny that his agency and the Department of Immigration were investigating allegations relating to work permit applications submitted by the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC).

A widely-circulated What’s App message stated: “The Department of Labour in conjunction with the Department of Immigration has initiated an investigation into allegations that BTC is circumventing the perversions [meaning provisions] of Section 86 of the Industrial Relations Act by applying for and obtaining short/long-term work permits where there are qualified and available Bahamians to fill vacancies.”

While the language used raised questions as to its authenticity, persons were asked to contact Mr Farquharson who did not outright deny it was genuine. “The Department of Labour will not comment on any investigation that may or may not be conducted by the Department.

“We are unable to comment further. I saw the post on social media and I have no comment. I cannot comment on any investigation that is going on at this time.” Mr Farquharson also denied making statements to another media house which quoted him as saying the probe was examining whether Jamaicans and Barbadians were being hired for technical posts Bahamians can fill.

Andre Foster, BTC’s chief executive, told Tribune Business that the carrier, which is 49 percent owned by the Government and has four Davis-appointed directors on its Board, was unaware of any probe by either the Department of Labour or Department of Immigration into its work permit applications/approvals.

Asserting that “I always think there’s folks stoking the flames”, he added that BTC was “very, very careful” to comply with both the law and the rules when it came to labour-related matters. Out of BTC’s 670 staff, Mr Foster added that work permit holders account for less than 1 percent, and said: “Wherever possible a Bahamian is looked at as first choice.”

Ms Benjamin, too, said she and the union were unaware of any investigation. “We were asking questions as to whether some of the BTC contract workers not rehired because they are not COVID vaccinated would be replaced by foreign workers, and if the Government would allow this,” she said. “The Prime Minister said they would not allow them to bring in to replace.”