By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Chamber of Commerce’s top labour specialist yesterday urged Bahamian trade unions to “get bigger than this” and place “saving the country” ahead of their own interests.

Peter Goudie, who is also vice-chairman of the National Tripartite Council, told Tribune Business that organised labour needed to understand there was “a limit” to what the government and private sector employers can afford given that The Bahamas is in “deep trouble” financially following the projected $3.4bn worth of devastation inflicted by Hurricane Dorian.

Arguing that rebuilding Abaco and Grand Bahama should be the national priority, rather than demonstrations and other forms of industrial action, Mr Goudie warned that the situation demanded Bahamians “stop thinking about me” and “pushing for every single nickel we can get”.

“I can’t help but say my concern is that the unions are making demands when they know, especially in the public sector, which is the government, the trouble the country is in,” he told this newspaper.

“There’s a positive side to this that says there’s a whole bunch of investment coming in, Disney is doing a lot of work, but these other guys have to get their act together. We’ve got to save our country instead of working for every single nickel we can get out of it.

“They’ve got to get bigger than this,” Mr Goudie added of the unions. “They’ve got to be partners... I’m vice-chairman of the National Tripartite Council, and the unions have got to be be partners with the other social partners [private sector and the government] as opposed to thinking about me.

“We’ve all got to do this. We’ve got to fix our country, and we’ve got a long way to go. We can’t just think about me; we have to think about country.”

Mr Goudie, the Chamber of Commerce director responsible for labour issues, spoke out amid an increasingly volatile industrial relations climate that has seen demonstrations in recent days by both private and public sector unions in a bid to flex their muscles over higher salary and benefit demands.

Besides the Union of Public Officers (UPO) protests outside the National Insurance Board (NIB) as their negotiations over a new industrial deal reach a critical stage, Atlantis was last week disrupted by Bahamas Hotel, Catering and Allied Workers (BHCAWU) members picketing the Coral Towers entrance on Thanksgiving Day.

Mr Goudie agreed that the Atlantis protest, in particular, was spectacularly ill-timed given that it coincided with the US holiday that marks the start of the peak winter tourist season when both hotels and their staff make the majority of their annual earnings.

It also occurred as The Bahamas seeks to rebuild its tourism business in Hurricane Dorian’s aftermath, and coincided with the internationally-televised ‘Battle 4 Atlantis’ tournament and efforts by Atlantis’ owner, Brookfield Asset Management, to sell the property.

Mr Goudie also questioned the value of the hotel union’s efforts given that the picketing happened on the same day its leadership was supposed to meet with Bahamas Hotel and Restaurant Employers Association (BHREA) representatives to sign-off on 75 percent, some 36 of 48, clauses that had been agreed in the first industrial agreement between the parties for almost seven years.

“I can’t help but say that I was very disappointed that the hotel union had a demonstration at Atlantis on Thanksgiving Day,” Mr Goudie added. “I thought: ‘Can we get bigger than this?’ It’s really unfortunate.

“We’re desperate for income in this country, and desperate for investment, and then we go and demonstrate on a day when there was about 100 percent occupancy. It’s bad, and on that very same day you’re going to be signing off on 36 of 48 clauses in the industrial agreement? Why would you do that? It’s just beyond me.

“As for the Government side, I think a lot of this is rolled over from the previous administration. At the end of the day, the Government doesn’t have the money, we’re in desperate trouble and the unions are doing demonstrations when we’re desperate for business.”

Mr Goudie said he had been interviewing persons from Abaco for jobs on that island on behalf of a client he declined to name. Most of the interviewees, he said, had either located to New Providence or were living in their damaged, leaking homes.

“We’ve got to get jobs back in Abaco,” the labour specialist added, “but we have people demonstrating in New Providence. You have to wonder where our priorities are. They should be rebuilding east end Grand Bahama and Abaco. We’ve got to stop blocking investment in our country.

“We’re going to have to do the best we can to make people understand there’s a limit to what we can do when the country is in deep trouble. We all know we’ve had the second-worst hurricane in the Atlantic’s history ever. Let’s remember where we are. We have an urgent need to fix Abaco and Grand Bahama, and it’s not going to happen with the unions demanding more money.

“It’s just not going to happen. Every person and company has been asked to give money to help Abaco and Grand Bahama. But then we have others saying: ‘Give me more’. You can’t have money for everything.”

The Prime Minister seemingly recognised the dangers posed by the increasingly unstable labour relations climate in the country by inviting a number of union leaders to a meeting earlier this week. However, Paul Maynard, the Bahamas Electrical Workers Union’s (BEWU) president, confirmed to Tribune Business later that the meeting never took place due to the Prime Minister suffering ill-health.

This year has seen multiple protests and demonstrations by a host of public sector unions, including the Bahamas Public Services Union (BPSU), Bahamas Doctors Union (BDU), Bahamas Nurses Union and the NIB union. Others, such as the Water & Sewerage Corporation’s management union, have found themselves in court battles with the Government.

The recent industrial tensions also likely reflect The Bahamas’ economic stagnation over the past two decades, with salaries and other forms of income failing to keep pace with an ever-increasing cost of living that was exacerbated by Value-Added Tax’s (VAT) introduction in 2015 and the subsequent hike to 12 percent.

Diminishing living standards and reduced disposable incomes, which have also been impacted by issues such as sky-high energy costs, have resulted in pressures for higher wages and benefits that the cash-strapped government is finding increasingly difficult to meet. The result has been a pressure-cooker atmosphere where something will have to break.

The NIB negotiations are a prime example of this, where unions are pushing for more despite multiple actuarial reports showing that the national social security system’s $1.6bn reserve fund will be exhausted by 2029-2030 unless drastic reform action is taken.

NIB, in its release earlier this week, said benefit payouts are already exceeding contribution income, meaning it is paying out more to claimants than it is taking in - the start of what all actuarial reports have warned about. This, it added, has been exacerbated by Hurricane Dorian and the surge in unemployment benefit claims and payments that has resulted.

Yet it has already agreed “to monetary increases in almost every category of staff benefits, including monthly mileage allowances, acting and responsibility allowances, and the introduction of new financial benefits” in the proposed industrial agreement with the union.

“There have also been increases to the performance-based Christmas bonus which is paid irrespective of the financial performance of the Board. NIB offers an attractive salary and benefits package to its staff, inclusive of health insurance and a staff pension plan,” NIB continued.

“The outstanding issues remain around automatic promotions of certain groups of employees and the compensation schedule (lump sums and salary add-ons).” This is despite the likes of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warning that NIB’s administrative expenses, including salary costs, are too high and need to be reduced.

This, too, ignores Hurricane Dorian, and the $677.5m deficit for 2019-2020 that the Government is now faced with, not to mention over $1bn in borrowing over the next two fiscal years.