By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Deputy Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

Bahamas Electrical Workers Union president Paul Maynard wants BTC’s Chief Executive Officer Garry Sinclair to do one thing: to go back to Jamaica.

He also urged the government of The Bahamas to bar both Mr Sinclair and Liberty Latin America’s CEO Balan Nair from entering the country.

Mr Maynard, who is also first vice president of the National Congress of Trade Unions Bahamas (NCTUB), threw his support behind the union representing BTC staff as controversy is seemingly plaguing the telecommunication provider’s executive team, the latest a warning from Mr Sinclair to the union that their tactics “could be fatal” to business.

Mr Sinclair also bluntly told the Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union and Bahamas Communications and Public Managers Union to “stop finding a dark cloud behind every silver lining” otherwise the former government monopoly will face “an existential crisis” as it tries to “win again” in a fiercely competitive communications market.

The comments were not welcomed by Mr Maynard who yesterday unleashed a tirade against Liberty, BTC’s parent company and accused the Minnis administration of “going soft” on foreigners. He used Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis’ response to Mr Nair’s comments last week and this most recent situation as an example. 

He said the government needed to make its voice heard as it had significant stake in BTC.

“See Minnis them joking,” Mr Maynard told The Tribune yesterday. “They need to put Sinclair and Nair on the stop list.

“Let me tell you something: no one can talk about our prime minister or the Bahamian people bad, that’s our job we do that among ourselves. That ain’t for no one to get involved in.

“And he ain’t going to give the unions them no damn orders. They talking about negotiating? How the hell you negotiating and he telling them get with it or else?”

He added: “I invite, as the first vice president of the NCTUB, Liberty Global to put their shares in the market since we are such a problem for them. Put the shares on the market.

“I am also asking the PM to put both of them on stop list. Don’t let these damn [expletive] come into the Bahamas and talk down to Bahamians. [Are] they crazy?”

Asked if he was concerned that his comments would be seen as xenophobic, Mr Maynard said: “I don’t care what the hell they say. This a Bahamian thing.

“The point is no foreigner gonna come in here and make demands of Bahamians. He come in our country, we ain’t in Jamaica.”

The union boss insisted that in recent weeks it has been evident that Bahamians aren’t respected in their own country.

“They just said, they say they apologised to Bahamians, but obviously you didn’t [because] you still come here this morning with this [expletive]?

“Who the hell he think he is? He need to carry his ass back to Jamaica, that’s what he need to do.

“He (is) living in this country.

“. . .The union and the Bahamian people ain’t got to do a goddamned thing but stay black and die,” Mr Maynard said. “The union ain’t got to do nothing because the service is [poor] anyway and they messed it up. Liberty has it that way.”

In an impassioned call for unity within BTC, Mr Sinclair told Tribune Business both the line staff and management union must “resist the temptation to fall back into ancient habits and practises from the monopoly days” if the carrier is to adjust its business model and properly compete with the likes of Cable Bahamas and Aliv.

Revealing that BTC had just agreed terms on a new industrial agreement with its management union, following closely behind a similar deal agreed with the BCPOU for the line staff, Mr Sinclair said he was at a loss when it came to identifying their continued grievances and instinct to “fight at every step”.

Voicing disquiet at the two unions’ seeming tendency to “sow dissent and extend controversy at the first sign of adversity”, Mr Sinclair argued that the “vast majority” of BTC workers and consumers now wanted to “move on” following last week’s controversy.

While acknowledging the hurt and upset caused by Mr Nair’s recent remarks about Bahamian worker productivity and attitudes, Mr Sinclair said the necessary apologies had been made quickly. And he used the comments by the head of BTC’s ultimate parent to lay down a challenge to his staff and the two trade unions.

He argued that the fall-out “should stiffen resolve” among BTC workers to achieve the vision he has set out for the carrier, namely to “prove” that it is the best communications operator in the region and then the world.