Determined to chart a new direction for the morning daily, one of the first things the new owners of the Nassau Guardian will have to deal with is finalizing an industrial agreement with the company’s union.
President of the Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union Robert Farquharson told the Bahama Journal that while he was not pleased with how management related to the union last year, the BCPOU is looking forward to returning to the bargaining table and concluding negotiations “in short order,” particularly in the wake of the company’s new ownership.
“The relationship with the Guardian’s management has been strained in the past, a situation which just recently changed following a meeting with them,” Mr. Farquharson said.
“We are also quite pleased that a group of Bahamians now own the majority of shares for The Nassau Guardian. We are certain that this would not affect our status as the sole bargaining agent for the employees.”
According to Friday’s front page article in the Guardian, Florida publisher John H. Perry sold his 60 percent stake in the company to PanEd Investments Limited.
The group consists of attorneys Colin Callender and Emmanuel Alexiou, businessman James Campbell and financial analyst Anthony Ferguson. The newspaper’s remaining 40 percent shares are held by other Bahamians.
In his first public statement as co-owner and chairman of the company, Mr. Callender said the move marks a “seminal moment in Bahamian affairs, at a time when globalization is challenging us to compete as never before.”
He added that over the next few months, the Nassau Guardian will undergo a full scale makeover, an effort requiring the full participation of all Guardian employees. But according to reports, this may not be such an easy task, as staff morale is low.
Mr. Farquharson said Guardian employees are hoping for improved salaries, as well as improved employment conditions, particularly where it concerns disciplinary procedures.
“The majority of the employees feel as if the management style, along with the approach of the (previous) owners left much to be desired,” Mr. Farquharson said. “They felt that their salaries were below the industry norm, and that there was too much of an American approach to the industrial relations, which is far different from the British system that we have adopted. And a lot of employees were not comfortable with this.”
According to Mr. Farquharson, most American private firms have little respect for the trade union movement in The Bahamas.
“The labour laws in the United States are very weak when compared to the British system in which trade unions traditionally have tremendous bargaining power,” he said. “The American culture was a part of the Guardian for a very long time.”
In addition to finalizing an industrial agreement, the BCPOU, which represents more than 60 percent of the Guardian’s non-managerial employees, is also trying to determine whether seven of the newspaper’s workers were unfairly dismissed. Some of them had been with the company for at least 20 years.
Mr. Farquharson said, “The union’s role is to determine if the Guardian is in a position to reemploy those persons who wish to be reemployed, and to determine if any severance packages were given in accordance with the Employment Act.”
The Bahama Journal
