The Tribune

By ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

The union representing Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) line staff yesterday said it has made an offer to resolve the dispute over five recently-terminated workers, three of whom are its members, and is waiting for the carrier to respond with a counter-offer.

Sherry Benjamin, the Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union (BCPOU) president, said: “At this point we are still waiting on them to get back to us. We would have provided them with an offer to settle the matter, and we are waiting on their counter-offer in the event that they're not prepared to bring staff back to work. I don't know what is the delay, why they haven't sent it to us yet. Or why we haven't met as yet.

“The meeting is actually to discuss the counter-offer to our offer. But I truly believe that, because there's such a delay, I think that it isn't something that they know we want, we would accept, and they're being hesitant not to to wait for the last minute to give us the offer.”

Ms Benjamin said the terminated workers and their families are suffering financially. She is hoping the Government will intervene as she insists “the termination was unjust”.

“But we're still patiently waiting, and we're still hoping that the Government of The Bahamas would step in and do the right thing by these persons who were terminated because I don't know how many times we need to prove to them that the termination was unjust, and it did not follow the laws of The Bahamas or our industrial agreement,” she argued.

“And so we are just hopeful that this thing comes to an end because these five persons, their lives are in the balance. Right now, they are unemployed, no income coming in, and they've eaten up all of their finances. So, really and truly, these people are hurting. They are hurting and, if they're hurting, their families are hurting.”

Although she did not disclose details of the offer made to BTC, Ms Benjamin said they added to the carrier’s normal voluntary separation package to account for the “discomfort and embarrassment” the dismissed employees have experienced.

“Well, BTC has since 1999 been offering a separation package,” Ms Benjamin said. “So all we did was build on a separation package. We would have added the value of the separation package, and then added a little extra for the pain and suffering, the wrongful termination, that the persons would have gone through. 

“We added to the voluntary separation package for the discomfort and the embarrassment, really, that those persons would have experienced over the past five months. We're just hopeful that they would see the wisdom in taking care of their employees, either bringing them back on the job or settling with the employees, and settling with them in a decent way, because at this point right now, again, these people’s lives are in the balance.”

Ms Benjamin and the BCPOU are arguing that the terminations did not follow the procedures set out in the industrial agreement with BTC as the employees were not given an opportunity to defend themselves.

“They have just gone ahead and terminated employees without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves,” she said. “The employees did not even know that they were being accused of doing anything wrong. They got a letter of termination.”

Following a union protest, BTC’s human resources chief, Tamica Colebrook, said BTC not only followed labour laws but also the terms of the industrial agreement and company policies regarding both the employee on-boarding and separation processes.

While Ms Benjamin was supposed to meet with BTC to discuss the counter-offer yesterday, the meeting has been postponed to today.