By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government was yesterday warned it had taken “a very dangerous position” in not paying the near-$1.8 million wage bill for Baha Mar’s expatriate employees, amid fears this might be the ‘final straw’ that encourages its already-jittery hotel brands to withdraw.

Edison Sumner, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chief executive, said the Government had already opened up a “Pandora’s Box” by electing to make three bi-weekly salary payments to Baha Mar’s Bahamian staff.

But now it had elected to take a “discriminatory position” by refusing to pay the monthly salary bill for Baha Mar’s foreign staff that was due yesterday.

“The danger was offering to pay the salaries in the first place,” Mr Sumner told Tribune Business. “We [the Chamber] made an issue of that the first time. We thought it was an ill-advised move on their part.

“We understand why they did it. They thought they had a social obligation to Baha Mar’s employees.”

Mr Sumner, in common with many other observers, questioned whether the Government’s Baha Mar salary payments had set a precedent such that it ought to make severance payments on behalf of workers at businesses such as CLICO (Bahamas), City Markets and countless others that had closed without paying workers what they were owed.

“Offering to pay salaries period: We thought that opened a very dangerous precedent,” Mr Sumner reiterated, “and now you’re going to offer salaries to those staff who are Bahamian, but not to those who are non-Bahamian.

“That establishes a dangerous position for the Government. You’re talking about what may be seen as a discriminatory position in offering wages to one set of employees and not the other set of employees.”

Meanwhile, a Baha Mar director voiced fears that the Government’s move would not only encourage key upper and middle management expatriate staff to leave, but also might prompt its three hotel brands to withdraw from the $3.5 billion project.

Dionisio D’Aguilar said that while the Grand Hyatt, Rosewood and SLS had so far been able to take everything thrown at them, they might draw the line at non-payment of key personnel.

“Once your expatriate staff are not paid and they decide to pull them, this will start to unravel like an onion,” Mr D’Aguilar told Tribune Business.

“It will unravel very quickly. It was petty and stupid, and doesn’t get the project where it needs to be.

“You go out and recruit these people, cajole them to come to the Bahamas, they buy into the Baha Mar idea and become motivators of the staff, and you don’t pay them. It’s bad business; just bad for the deal.”

Key Cabinet ministers, though, see matters differently. Fred Mitchell, minister of foreign affairs, yesterday used an address to the United Nations (UN) Security Council on ‘peace and security’ in small island states to effectively paint Baha Mar and its principal, Sarkis Izmirlian, as a risk to this nation’s security.

Clearly referring to the $3.5 billion developer, Mr Mitchell said: “The Bahamas faces now a threat which is existential to good governance; the realisation that a single investor can, if not properly managed, seek to destabilise the governance of a country by its dominance of the economy and by deliberately and improperly interfering in the local politics of the country.”

No explanation was given as to how Baha Mar and Mr Izmirlian are “deliberately and improperly interfering”in Bahamian politics as a result of the dispute over the project.