The Tribune

By FARRAH JOHNSON

fjohnson@tribunemedia.net

FUSION employees recently placed on unpaid leave amid the COVID-19 crisis have hit out at owners of the entertainment centre, saying they are tired of "excuses" about payroll.

Last week, the superplex told its employees Fusion was facing a payroll deficiency that would make it incapable of satisfying salaries for this pay period.

Prior to that, the company had also placed over 350 employees on unpaid leave after Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis announced his first COVID-19 emergency order, calling for the suspension of most business operations in the country.

Employees affected by the entertainment centre's closure said the situation did not surprise them, because they "saw the lay-offs coming".

Those who spoke to this newspaper asked for their names to be changed to protect their identities.

"There's constantly been excuses and so forth about payroll, about time cuts and basically about monies that we've worked for, so I would say in a nutshell we really saw this coming," one employee, Gloria Greene, told The Tribune.

"The previous payroll we would have received was late as well and that was before the coronavirus outbreak, so all this comes as no shock to us as employees."

Ms Greene said they had heard rumours about the delay of the payroll but weren't formally notified until Wednesday last week.

"Nobody came and said anything until after 11pm that night when we received an email that we wouldn't be able to get paid and right now it's chaos. Everybody is freaking out because they don't know where they will get the next dollar from to feed their families. Things hard, bills still coming regardless of the fact and overall people just fed up.

"Prior to this, they were saying that the system that they use for payroll is down or the cash flow hasn't reached the bank account."

Ms Greene insisted Fusion should have had "some back-up funds put aside" to pay staff "for at least two or three pay periods" to prepare for unforeseen circumstances.

She added employees wouldn't be so hurt if they had received a "portion of what was owed" to them so that they had "something to fall back on".

Another employee, Robin Miller, also said Fusion workers expected the delay because they were often "disappointed when it came to payroll".

She added that moving forward, she felt the superplex should at least make provisions for economic disasters.

"To be honest, we can't say if we're going to return or not because nobody knows how long this pandemic is going to continue," she said.

"And then we're in a difficult situation because you don't know how long it's going to take the economy to bounce back. They couldn't pay us before all of this pandemic situation, so we ain't even sure we will get pay when we return back."

Britney Smith, another employee with two children, added that the company's closure and delayed payments will have an immense impact on Fusion workers.

"We have families and we still have bills to pay," she said. "Life still going on regardless and everybody is distraught and basically feel the same way so whatever help we could receive, we need it and we appreciate it."

When contacted for comment, Carlos Foulkes, Fusion's chief executive officer, said: "Now, I would admit as a start-up company we've had challenges and those challenges have had an impact on the payroll processing.

"In one case, we had a system failure for the direct deposit that has resulted in going into a manual process where we have to cut cheques - hundreds of them - in a short timeline. That has a delay on the payroll."

Still, Mr Foulkes insisted it was crazy for employees to think the company was using the pandemic as an excuse not to pay them.

"That is a ridiculous claim," he said. "First of all, the pandemic did shut down business. Number one: it killed the revenue for the month of March and even before the announcement from the government, persons were getting concerned about going out to public spaces.

"We've (also) seen occupancy rates plummeting and movies from Hollywood schedules were pulled for the month of March, meaning that there was no main attraction into the theatre because Hollywood studios decided because of what was going on in the US, they were going to close down their theatres."

Mr Foulkes said the changes to the movie schedules "resulted in a reduction in revenue for the month of March" for Fusion, which ended up being "less than one-third than what it was last year this same time".

"For the week of payroll we had anticipated easily meeting the payroll and meeting some other obligations we had like payments out to our insurance company," he added.

"But unfortunately, the day before payroll we got a notice from our creditors (stating) that they would not be able to make the payment that we were expecting. As a result, that immediately impacted the payment. It was no excuse, it was simply a matter of fact."

Asked if he was in the position to give an update on how much longer employees would have to wait to be paid, he added: "We are currently - on a personal level - looking at how we can assist the employees and the shareholders have already put in any type of extra funds we had on the side into the business.

"We don't want the employees to think that they themselves are suffering and we are not. It's a collective effort and we all are attempting to build something great together and as a result, we have looked into ways to get the additional funds in to pay the payroll, but it's beyond my personal capacity at this time."

Mr Foulkes said he has been speaking to representatives at the Ministry of Finance in regards to "collecting a credit" the company had "through the government".

"I say credit because we do have some funds that we are seeking to get back from the government and we will use those funds to make payroll," he explained.

"As to the timeline on that, I simply cannot say...but I anticipate that we should be able to correct this problem some time in the middle of April, before the employees come back to work."