The Tribune

• Former Lyford Cay employees ‘left out’ of hotel union agreement

• Staff who were laid off in 2020 ‘were active part’ of negotiations

• Union president says ex-staff are not entitled to any funds

By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

FORMER employees of the Lyford Cay Club say that they were “cut out of the deal” struck by the Bahamas Hotel, Catering and Allied Workers Union (BHCAWU) and the Bahamas Hotel and Restaurant Employers Association.

Nebra Russell, a former employee of the Lyford Cay Club, said she and other previous employees were left out of the hotel union’s recently negotiated industrial agreement.

The previous industrial agreement expired in 2013 and Ms Russell said that workers that were laid of in 2020 were an active part of the union’s negotiations for seven years and that it is unfair that they are not receiving the benefits that current employees will reap from the agreement.

She said: “It’s not a handful of us that were laid off, it’s like 200 of us and all of us are on the same grounds that they think that we should be paid and it’s not fair that they cut us out of the deal.

“We were a part of the deal and you can’t go rewrite a contract and you separate these people, these people no longer work there, but these people were always in the bargain from you was bargaining in 2013 and this is 2024 and you just get it solved. We should have gotten the same benefit as everybody else.”

She explained that she was an employee at the Lyford Cay Club for over 20 years she said that they were a part of the bargaining process from the contract first expired in 2013 and they are not at fault for the negotiations dragging on for over a decade.

She said: “I was working for Lyford Cay Club for almost 21 years and during the time that we were there we had a contract that was pending that the union couldn’t get signed. COVID came along and we got laid off from

Lyford Cay Club and some of us didn’t return.

“The contract being finalised dragged out took quite a long time. This contract was from 2013 and we were working at the club at that time and it was not our fault that the contract did not get sign.

“They rewrite the contract and because we were no longer there then we were no longer included in the $2,500 pay out and it’s supposed to be another one. When they were bargaining for the money from this contract came up, we were there.”

Ms Morris, a former employee at the Lyford Cay Club, maintained that the former employees are “entitled” to the $2,500 payout negotiated by the union under the new trade agreement.

She said it “doesn’t make no sense” that new employees and employees that recently returned to work will be paid while former employees that were a part of seven years of negotiations will not be.

She said: “We are entitled to the money but they are saying that we aren’t entitled to it.

“We were working there in 2013, we left the club in 2020. If the contract was supposed to be signed from we were working there and it didn’t get signed all them years from 2013 and we were there all that time up to 2020 in the pandemic, and it still wasn’t signed so why aren’t we entitled to the money.

“If we went back there to work we could’ve gotten it. They didn’t call everybody back when they pay us out they didn’t pay us out that money. Some people just gone back, it we had gone back then we could’ve gotten it.

“We didn’t go back so we are not entitled to it, that doesn’t make no sense to me.”

Darrin Woods, the BHCAWU president, disagreed with the former employee’s stance and explained that they were not entitled to any funds as they are not employees.

He said that although they were employees when negotiations began, they were not at the time it was concluded.

He explained that a contract is only valid for five years and as the agreement expired in 2013, eleven years or three contract cycles have already passed.

He said: “If we started negotiations with you being there and it is not concluded and you leave for whatever reason you leave and now that it has actually come to fruition unless there is an agreement that should happen.

“We cannot effectively say that an agreement that was in 2013 to 2018 and then from 2018 to 2023, it essentially the first year of the third agreement so we don’t see the basis in law for you to claim anything.

“If the agreement was expired 2013 and they signed the agreement in 2014 or 2015, still, if they were not there, they wouldn’t have been entitled to it.”

He maintained that the union does not give lump sum payments to former employees and that they all received everything they were ‘entitled to’ inclusive of redundancy pay and $500 in pandemic assistance.

He said: “And notwithstanding that you can ask any trade union if anytime any lump sum was paid and or retroactivity payment if persons who are no longer employed has gotten it. The reality is the union has not done anything different than what was done in the past.

“We made sure that everything that they were entitled to until the club closed and they were made redundant. When they left, they got whatever they were entitled to and their redundancy pay and they received the assistance that the union negotiated for them during the pandemic.”