The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Trade union leaders yesterday pledged to move on “a very significant” Supreme Court ruling and other recommendations that could produce the biggest shake-up for decades in Bahamian workplace relations.

Obie Ferguson and John Pinder, heads of the Bahamas’ two trade union bodies, told Tribune Business they will push to enforce a court ruling that effectively paves the way for workers to join the union of their choice.

Up until now, Bahamian trade union membership has been restricted to persons of a specific craft or skill, but the two union leaders said the Supreme Court verdict effectively swept away this provision of the Industrial Relations Act.

Messrs Ferguson and Pinder argued that the ruling effectively brought Bahamian labour laws into line with the constitution’s ‘freedom of association’ provisions, and the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention 87.

That convention affirms the rights of global workers to have freedom of association, and the right to organise. While the Bahamas has signed on to this, the Government has ratified Convention 87 and passed it into law.

Successive Governments, and employers, have preferred to ensure trade union membership is restricted to specific crafts, fearing otherwise that industrial and labour relations could become too unwieldy and deteriorate into chaos if a company’s workers were joining multiple unions.

That position, though, could be under threat from the verdict, won by Mr Ferguson on behalf of Dr Thomas Bastian and his Bahamas General Workers Union (GWU), which has been little-noticed until now.

In a settlement agreed with the Attorney General’s Office, Justice Ian Winder ordered Shane Gibson, minister of labour and national insurance, to follow the law and determine whether the General Workers Union was entitled to be recognised as the bargaining agent for non-managerial staff at Bahamas Engineering Technologies Ltd.

“What has happened is that Justice Winder made a ruling on behalf of Dr Bastian and the GWU that they have a right to be registered,” Mr Pinder told Tribune Business.

“They were challenged by the Registrar of Trade Unions in that the Industrial Relations Act speaks only to a union of craft.

“The ruling means the Act is in violation of the country’s constitution. The Government needs to amend the Industrial Relations Act to move that out of there, and allow workers to join the union of their choice,” the National Congress of Trade Unions (NCTU) chief added.

“Recommendations have been made by the NCTU in conjunction with the Trades Union Congress that the Government needs to amend the Act to bring it into line with the ILO Convention 87 and the country’s constitution.”

Mr Pinder told Tribune Business that the NCTU will now recommend to all its affiliate unions that they adjust their constitutions, so they can accept members from outside their particular professions or crafts.

Mr Ferguson said the GWU ruling was “very significant” in that it opened the way for Bahamian workers to choose the union they wanted to represent them, rather than be restricted by their trade.

“It’s a very important day for workers in the country,” Mr Ferguson told Tribune Business. “It’s very significant.

“Successive governments and employers have taken the position that you can only form a trade union of a particular craft. However, the constitution of the Bahamas makes provision for you to join a union of your choice, not necessarily one of your craft.”

Mr Ferguson said the Bahamas General Workers Union was now capable of representing all Bahamian workers.

“I think the employers and successive governments have been concerned as to the power of such a union,” he added.

Mr Ferguson, though, argued that a ‘general workers union’ would have “massive scale” that would allow it to provide better services, and more scholarships, for its members.

Edison Sumner, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chief executive, told Tribune Business that private sector representatives would seek to raise the General Workers Union’s creation, and its implications, at the next Tripartite Council.

He said this was an appropriate forum because Dr Bastian was one of the union representatives on the Council, and added that the private sector did “not have any immediate difficulty” with that union’s creation.

“We’ll have to consider it further and see who the workers covered by that union are,” Mr Sumner told Tribune Business.

“We will have an opportunity to address this issue, and deal with it head on at the Tripartite level. Workers being integrated into the General Workers Union has not come up as an issue yet.”

Mr Sumner said unions required the support of ‘50 per cent plus one’ of a company’s workforce to become the recognised bargaining agent, suggesting a ‘general workers union’ might have difficulty attaining this benchmark.

“In the case of the General Workers Union, we’re not sure how they’re going to achieve that,” he added. “We’ve not seen any charter or operational documents on how they intend to achieve that objective.

“But when we get out to the next Tripartite Council meeting in the next two weeks, we’ll raise that. It’s only prudent at that point to raise it with him [Dr Bastian]; how they intend to acquire members and whether they will follow the protocols of other trade unions.

“It’s something we’ll try to get on the agenda for the next Tripartite Council meeting.”

Mr Pinder, meanwhile, said he would be pushing for amendments to deal with “several inappropriate provisions in the Industrial Relations Act” that were identified as violating both the constitution and Convention 87 at an ILO workshop earlier this week.

He added that the NCTU was set to “fast forward” its application to be registered as a trade union, having been informed at the workshop that it had every right to obtain such status because it, too, represented workers.

Mr Pinder told Tribune Business he also learnt that trade unions could represent both line staff and managerial workers in the same industry, via different industrial agreements for each. In the Bahamas, unions are restricted to one or the other.

Other “violations” identified by Mr Pinder were the bar on probationary workers joining a trade union, and the process requiring unions to apply to the Registrar for a secret ballot to vote on proposals to change their constitution.

“These are some of the things we will be challenging the Government and employers on in terms of the nature of our membership and broadening our scope,” Mr Pinder told Tribune Business.