Published On:Thursday, September 02, 2010

By TANEKA THOMPSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

tthompson@tribunemedia.net

DISGRUNTLED former employees of Success Training College who claim they are owed thousands of dollars in back pay are frustrated by what they feel are broken promises from the school's top officials.

One of those former employees claim fed up staff filed a trade dispute with the Department of Labour earlier this week with respect to these grievances in an effort to push the school to pay them what is owed.

When contacted for comment, CEO and shareholder Whitney Bastian admitted the school owed salary payments to staff - he said he could not provide an accurate breakdown at the time - due to financial difficulties brought on by dismal enrolment rates.

In order to pay fixed operating costs, Mr Bastian said, he recently took out a bank loan using his home as collateral. The bank is no longer extending him credit making it difficult for the school to live up to its financial commitments, he said.

One employee, who resigned from the school last week, claimed that since January, paychecks have been either late or short. He added that the school's promises cannot help loyal employees who are struggling to meet their own financial commitments.

Payments

"There is a failure to pay staff from January. They are sometimes paid 'piece, piece', but some staff members are still owed," said the employee, who added that employees were again promised full payments on Friday but only some got paid.

"It's just a total disregard for people and their positions. Some of them are just out of high school and trying to get an associates degree while working and they don't have the opportunity to go elsewhere. These people have families and they have bills to pay that are piling up on them."

Another employee who recently left the school in search of new employment said the situation is burdensome for someone with a family and accused Mr Bastian of having a "nonchalant" attitude towards staff concerns.

"It's difficult to make it because you're not getting any type of income," said another employee who has worked at the school for more than two years.

"There have been problems with salaries from I started there but it started to get worse in the last year or so. There were delays in payment, empty promises in terms of receiving the payment and just a nonchalant attitude by Mr Bastian," said the employee, who did not want to be named.

The delay in salary payments is due to a 60 per cent fall-off in enrolment rates at the school, said Mr Bastian, brought on by the economic recession and students' fears that their class credits will not be transferable to other tertiary institutions.

"I understand how he (referring to one of the former employees) feels, I understand the outbursts.

"He can't go and explain his situation to the person he owes, to the bank. But every day we are trying to resolve this problem.

"Many of the other employees have lending institutions, landlord down on them but we don't have the student population to bring in the money we need. But we are trying to keep them (staff) on," said the CEO, who claims staff are called into weekly meetings where they are updated on the situation.

He said he has no plans to close the cash-strapped school and hopes to ink an agreement with the College of the Bahamas to offer their wait-listed students college preparatory classes and also launch Bachelor's Degree programmes to boost enrolment.

Mr Bastian maintains that staff at Success' main campus in Nassau will be paid before school opens later this month. He claims he has not been notified of any labour dispute filed at the Department of Labour.