Five former employees of Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas yesterday pleaded for intervention from the government after they were terminated on Sunday reportedly for not fulfilling work orders.
The men claimed that they were simply standing up for themselves and said that the poor treatment they had been receiving from their employer finally became unbearable and something needed to be done to bring a change at the establishment.
However, a manager at Stuart Cove’s, located at South Ocean in New Providence, refuted the men’s claims, stating that they failed to complete work that was scheduled for Saturday afternoon.
Former boat captain and manager, Dion Walkine, claimed, “When we went to work on Sunday we were told that our services [were] no longer needed, we terminated ourselves and had forfeited our jobs.”
According to Mr. Walkine, for the past several months the men – Morgan Olssen, Robert Bingham, Collin Roberts and Scott Shillabeer – have worked long overtime hours but have not been properly compensated.
“For the last three months the company has been overbooking and we were putting up with extra hours under water and extra work was added and we were unable to be compensated for the additional hours worked,” Mr. Walkine claimed.
The uproar transpired on Saturday when the men claimed that an additional 42 passengers were booked for trips that were not on the schedule for the men to complete.
Reportedly, management regulations allow for two morning session trips with 12 persons per session and the same applies for the afternoon session for the 45 minutes underwater tour.
“Saturday it came to a point that we all went to work to complete our duties of 24 trips for the morning and 24 trips for the afternoon,” Mr. Walkine said. “We were willing to work. We completed the morning trip. Before we left the manager told us that the trips were overbooked [by] some 37. However, when we returned some 42 persons were booked.
“We then decided that we were not going to take out the 42 persons and were advised by another manager to make a stand to do something about the additional work load,” Mr. Walkine said.
However, this advice reportedly proved to be detrimental to the five men in question.
The men claimed that since the incident occurred they have tried to arrange a meeting with Stuart Cove, the owner of the establishment, but were told that he was off the island and were instructed to pick up their final pay cheque.
“We feel that something needs to be done and we would appreciate if the government looks into this to see if we can find some resolution to what’s going on at South Ocean,” Mr. Walkine said.
The men claimed that they tried to address their concerns to management, but claimed that they were never given any opportunity to meet with the establishment’s owner.
“All of our captains’ licenses are being put on the line because we are overbooking and overloading boats,” Mr. Walkine claimed. “If we don’t follow instructions of management their practice is to fire and replace the workers with foreign workers.”
But an official at the establishment told a different story.
David Eads, operations manager at Stuart’s Cove, said the men abandoned their jobs and this was the determining factor in their termination.
He explained that the men are responsible for taking guests into the sea in a motorized bubble where a person sits on a bicycle with his or her head sticking into a bubble that is fed by air.
Mr. Eads said that on Saturday it was unusually busy for the company with more than the maximum amount of persons booking for the sea tour resulting in an additional 34 persons booked for the afternoon session.
“When I went out to take the roster to the crew of the sub boat there was nobody there. So we had to find other persons to brief the tourists on what to expect and during the briefing I had to gather enough people to run the trip for the tourists that afternoon so basically they just abandoned their jobs,” Mr. Eads explained.
Mr. Eads also refuted the claim that the men were not being compensated for working overtime and he added that workers received double time if they were asked to come to work on their fixed day off.
He said the company has no plans to rehire the five men and suggested that they search elsewhere for jobs.
By: Bianca Symonette, The Bahama Journal
