The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business

Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A TRADE union leader yesterday said The Bahamas’ latest five-year Decent Work Country Programme (DWCP) will demand a “strengthening” of current labour laws.

Bernard Evans, the National Congress of Trade Unions of The Bahamas (NCTUB) president, told Tribune Business that the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Government and the various social partners - employers and unions - takes the initiative into the implementation phase.

“There’s a number of briefings that we will do with the various stakeholders, and to deal with human resource personnel, to let them know what it means to have decent work and what it really enshrines,” Mr Evans said.

Decent Work Country Programmes (DWCPs) have been established as the main vehicle for delivering ILO support to multiple countries. They often feature as a key component in national development strategies.

They also place ILO knowledge, instruments, assistance and co-operation at the service of governments, employers and organised labour. Present at the MoU signing were representatives from both the ILO and the Government, Khrystle Rutherford-Ferguson, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chairman, and trade union leaders.

Mr Evans said: “There are four pillars of the DWCP. One, that a worker has a right to organise and socialise with management in terms of anything that concerns them and their well-being. Whether it is safety issues, it’s wages. Whether it’s health or pensions, or all of the stuff, without being chastised or facing repercussions because of it.

“When you see a union will now have industrial agreements, all the tenants of those agreements, we have those same protections that the DWCP has called for. If you fall outside of a union, where you can’t negotiate, you don’t have a right to sit down with an owner of a company or the chief executive, you somehow don’t have those guarantees.

“So sometimes the fundamental right to organise is really shunned upon and really telling you that you can’t have it. So this is a violation of not only the DWCP agenda, but of our constitution that says you have a right to organise. We expect legislation to be strengthened. Legislation is there but there is a lack of penalties if an employer reneges. It is not really carried through.”