By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Deputy Chief Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

LABOUR Minister Shane Gibson yesterday blamed the Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union for the termination of more than 60 One&Only Ocean Club employees earlier this month, saying the union had allowed the workers’ industrial agreement to expire, leaving the door open for them to be fired.

He said the union withheld this from employees and was instead trying to portray the Christie administration as a government not concerned with the rights of workers.

Mr Gibson explained that in the expired industrial agreement was a clause that stipulated if the union wanted to change the agreement, a proposal had to be submitted at least six months prior to the expiration date.

Mr Gibson further accused the union of refusing to extend the agreement on the invitation of hotel executives. He added that the union had been “ungrateful” despite all the government had done to safeguard employee rights.

On December 6, 61 employees and line staff were fired from the resort with its executives citing “performance based” reasons as the basis for the terminations.

The hotel was reportedly dissatisfied over unsavoury guest reviews about its staff, prompting the pre-Christmas layoffs.

In an official statement, the hotel said it was in the process of “reorganising our structure and redefining job descriptions across the resort.” This, it said, has resulted in a “necessary turnover of about 60 positions” at the hotel that will “ensure a streamlining of the guest experience.”

In response, senior officials in the BHCAWU called the terminations, which come three weeks before Christmas, an “outrage” and another indicator that “the labourers in this country basically have nobody to defend them.”

Mr Gibson said: “It is unfortunate that the union is now trying to shift the blame to the government as to the persons being terminated. Every trade unionist knows and anyone familiar with labour laws or the Employment Act knows that individual collective bargaining agreements gives you much better protection than the law itself.

“And so for instance where in the Employment Act any employer whether you work for Cable Bahamas, The (Nassau) Guardian, The Tribune, they could walk in there today and tell you today they no longer want your service for no reason and all they have to do is pay you out. And once they compensate you in accordance with the law that is all that’s required.

“In collective bargaining agreements, it’s spelled out where you have to commit a major breach and if it’s a major breach you be terminated. In most cases right away. If it’s a minor breach you are given a verbal warning, a written warning and then subsequently terminated.”

He continued: “Unfortunately in the hotel union’s case, which they are not telling their members is they allowed their industrial agreement to expire and in the industrial agreement it said that if you wanted to submit a proposal to change the agreement then you do it at least six months prior to the expiration, which they did not do.

“As a result of that the agreement expired. So the employer then invited them to just extend that existing agreement, but they refused they said no and eventually it ended up in court.

“Now it started off with the union because had they submitted the proposal prior to six months this would have been a non-issue. One&Only would not have been able to walk in there that morning and terminate employees because there is a set process, an agreed process of how you will go about terminating employees.

“Now as for the government, we recognise that there are some deficiencies in the law which we have asked the Tripartite Council to look into and send us some recommendations because as you know before you legislate social dialogue the minister at any time can go and amend the laws and, of course, we had it where we discussed all of the amendments with the stakeholders that leads to Parliament.”

Mr Gibson insisted that during the Progressive Liberal Party’s term in office, it has sought to ensure that workers were protected.

“Don’t forget we went to Parliament I think it was last year where we had to validate the hotel union just to keep them existing. We had to validate them. We introduced an act especially for them.

“That is why I thought it was very ungrateful for them to keep going to the press saying that it’s the government not showing that we care for the people when everything that we did from that time that we were elected in 2012 we did it for the people.

“We amended the Industrial Relations Act. We did it specifically to protect the workers. We are now going back to Parliament again to amend the Industrial Relations Act again to provide protection for the workers of the country and so it is unfortunate that they didn’t do what they were supposed to do,” Mr Gibson said.