The Bahamas Financial Services Union is calling on the Government to save the estimated $3 million a year in credit card business, as workers took their concerns to the doors of Parliament Wednesday.
Meanwhile an executive team from FirstCaribbean International Bank headquarters in Barbados is expected to meet with the Government and BFSU at month’s end to address “pressing” industrial concerns, The Guardian has learnt.
About 40 union members confronted Prime Minister Perry Christie before he entered the House of Assembly, pleading with him to ensure an industrial agreement is signed with FirstCaribbean.
Union secretary general Lashon Sawyer told the Prime Minister that the bank seemed not interested in a worker contract, only the merger, which was why the union pleaded with the Government not to sign off on the combination of Barclays and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce until an agreement is signed.
The financial workers had marched from their nearby office to Parliament Square singing the signature trade union song, “Solidarity forever.”
However, Prime Minister Christie told Ms Sawyer he was disappointed in the way the union made its complaints.
He said the Government was the last in the region to agree to the merger, and that he upheld the approval because, unlike others in the region, The Bahamas wanted to ensure it had the “uncompromising commitment” from the leadership of the new bank.
He told the union: “If the bank had not met their agreement with you, that is the time it is brought to the Government’s attention that you agreed, the bank agreed, we agreed that we proceed on this basis.
“An economy like The Bahamas could not conceivably held up until an industrial agreement was signed.”
Minister of Labour and Immigration Vincent Peet also spoke with the
disheartened workers, saying he was aware of them being directly affected by the merger process, and hence, their right to be upset.
Notwithstanding the matter is a regional one and that each country would be fighting for its workers’ rights, Mr. Peet assured the workers that it is this Government’s job to protect them.
“We make $3 million a year in credit card business alone, can you imagine taking that out of the country,” Ms Sawyer said, adding that Jamaica lost that revenue, but Cayman Islands has fought it.
Mr. Peet insisted that the Government would protect workers’ rights.
Minister of Financial Services and Investments Allyson Maynard-Gibson said that when the PLP came to power in May 2002, the merger was “pretty much a done deal.”
She told The Guardian that executives from the Barbados head office are expected in town at the end of this month so a consensus can be reached among all concerned parties.
The issue came to a head when the union learnt the credit-card section of FirstCaribbean would be relocated to Barbados, leaving some 40 Bahamians unemployed.
However, FirstCaribbean apologised to the workers for failing to discuss the planned elimination of their jobs, and reinforced its commitment to the credit-card business.
The union has filed a trade dispute at the Department of Labour, for reconciliation of the industrial agreement.
FirstCaribbean is the result of the combination of two complementary and leading financial services businesses in the Caribbean ﾖ Barclays Bank PLC and CIBC West Indies Holdings Limited ﾖ with the aim of offering customers enhanced products and improved and extended access to banking services. FirstCaribbean focuses on the needs of the businesses and people of the Caribbean, while delivering the global reach of its founding institutions. FirstCaribbean or its operating companies are publicly traded on the stock exchanges of Barbados, Jamaica, The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago, and by market capitalisation is one of the largest locally listed banks in the Caribbean, with approximately $9 billion in assets, and more than 700,000 accounts. FirstCaribbean operates in 15 countries.
By Lindsay Thompson, The Nassau Guardian
