By SANCHESKA DORSETT

Tribune Staff Reporter

sdorsett@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Telecommunications Company has threatened to terminate contracts with 147 workers if they do not sign a new agreement by today, Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union President Bernard Evans said yesterday.

In an interview with The Tribune, Mr Evans said the employees have all agreed to “stand their ground” and not the sign the new contracts until they have “proper representation” and time to renegotiate.

He said while the union does not currently represent the workers after the employees severed ties with them years ago, they have applied to have the BCPOU represent them once again to negotiate on their behalf.

Mr Evans said the employees accepted voluntary separation packages (VSOP) from BTC, under the guise that they “could become entrepreneurs”.

However, he said two years later BTC seems to be “going back on their word.”

“About two years ago, 147 employees in the technical field were made to accept voluntary separation packages and were told that BTC would outsource the department. They were also encouraged to form into a company and BTC would give them the contract to perform the same services,” Mr Evans said.

“At the time, the union negotiated that the workers would continue to make salaries until they put together the company and BTC was able to prepare the RFP. Well, two companies emerged from among those persons, however two years later BTC took the RFP off the table and now they want to change the terms and conditions of the agreement and sign a new deed of release and have a new contract. They are not currently represented by the union because they were separated but they came back two weeks ago to rejoin for us to represent them. By next Wednesday we will know if the application for them to join has been approved. But from what I know, they were told to go in today (Monday) and sign the new contract and if they do not, they will be fired.”

Mr Evans said all the workers have agreed not to sign the new contract because they had “no time” to review the new deal.

“It’s economic duress and the workers don’t understand the legal jargon in the contract,” Mr Evans said.

“So they have all agreed not to sign, we should know by today (Tuesday) what the outcome of that decision will be. They all went to work and continued as normal. If BTC didn’t promise these persons they would become entrepreneurs, they would never have accepted the packages. Now BTC wants to make major changes to the original contract and the workers are not having it,” he claimed.

In 2015, it was announced that BTC had plans to cut hundreds of jobs in preparation for competition in the mobile phone sector. It is unclear how many employees accepted those voluntary separation packages.

The Tribune attempted to reach representatives from BTC for comment, but calls were not returned up to press time.