The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A well-known labour attorney has called on all Bahamian trade unions and the Government to help absorb the costs of a Privy Council appeal, suggesting the case at issue has far-reaching effects for the labour movement and wider country.

Trades Union Congress (TUC) president, Obie Ferguson, told Tribune Business that the Court of Appeal ruling last year in favour of the Grand Lucayan Resort would effectively take the trade union movement and workers back some 50 years.

“We have made an application to the Privy Council for leave to have the matter adjudicated at the Privy Council. I have done that,” he said.

“I have filed the appropriate application for leave to argue the case in front of the Privy Council. The effect of it is far reaching. It affects every trade union in the Bahamas. There has never been a case where an application for renegotiation has been made and completed before the old one expires.

“The employers generally would not negotiate in good faith with the expressed purpose of the new agreement not being implemented before the old one expires. Therein lies the problem because according to this ruling, once that expires that’s the end of it and it puts the workers in ‘No Man’s Land’. That’s the reason why we are appealing it.”

Mr Ferguson was referring to the Court of Appeal decision which found that the Grand Lucayan was not obligated to keep providing Christmas bonuses and ham and turkey to union members after their industrial agreement had expired.

The appellate court decision overturned an earlier Supreme Court ruling that the expired industrial agreement’s provisions had been incorporated into the individual contracts of the Grand Lucayan staff.

Finding in favour of the appeal by the Freeport-based property’s owner, Hutchison Lucaya, the Court of Appeal also ruled that the Commonwealth Union of Hotel Workers and Allied Workers had ‘no standing’ to bring the action.

This was because the 2002 agreement with the Grand Lucayan had been signed by the Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union (BHCAWU), which the Commonwealth Union subsequently defeated and replaced as the bargaining agent for the resort’s line staff.

Due to the fact that the Commonwealth Union was neither a party to the expired industrial agreement, nor staff’s individual employment contracts, the Court of Appeal said the case should have been brought by the impacted workers and not the union.

“Until that ruling is overturned the employer may not be governed by an unregistered industrial agreement or an expired industrial agreement,” said Mr Ferguson.

“Some agreements take a year, some take two years and some take longer, but the parties used to obey and honour those terms. Now the Court of Appeal is saying that once the agreement expires, unless you had something in it which one can imply that those terms ought to be continuous, there’s no obligation on the employer to abide by them.”

He added: “I have asked all trade unions in the Bahamas, and even the Government to participate in absorbing the costs and the legal fees for the appeal at the Privy Council because I think it is in the interest of the country. It’s not a one union issue.

“One union might be affected now but it’s something that will affect the entire country and the Minister of Labour, because he will have a lot of dismissed workers claiming to have certain things when in fact, in law, there is not a legitimate claim to it once the agreement expires.”