Approximately 50 line staff employees of the Sandals Royal Bahamian Resort on Cable Beach staged a protest on Monday over their struggle to have their gratuities increased by five percent to 15 percent.
The resort reportedly employs more than 500 workers.
The workers who protested at Goodman’s Bay also want to become unionized. They did not report to work on Monday, but hotel officials maintained that their operations and guest services were running normally.
The workers claim that the Bahamas property of the resort chain is the most lucrative of all the properties, and they would like for that to be reflected in their pay.
Alfred Taylor, a bartender who was the group’s spokesman, said an increase in gratuity from 10 percent to 15 percent would bring Bahamian employees at the Sandals property in The Bahamas on par with other resorts and businesses on New Providence.
“What we want is freedom and equality for the Bahamian people and 15 percent of the overall pot is what we will like and nothing less,” Mr. Taylor said. “We work six days a week and more and still in the end it is still not profitable for us to work in a major hotel in The Bahamas.”
He claimed that workers at Sandals are the “laughing stock” of the entire hotel industry.
“When you go to [a bank] and ask for a loan they laugh at you because they know Sandals is a major hotel and doesn’t pay, ” Mr. Taylor claimed.
The workers said they had an unproductive meeting with the resort’s general manager, Stephen Ziadie, on the issue of gratuity last week. They said they felt insulted by what management offered and called on the government to intervene.
But Mr. Ziadie explained that the 10 percent gratuity is a standard rate at all Sandals properties, which is set in the packages sold to guest.
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ﾠ Sandals General Manager Stephen Ziadie (Photo by Timothy Clarke)
He said the gratuities are shared among employees, and explained that gratuities are influenced by the applicable room rates at a given time, as well as the level of paid occupancies.
“Given the competitive nature of the travel business at this time, Sandals Royal Bahamian has been offering discounted rates to the marketplace in an effort to drive occupancy levels,” he said in a press release.
“This is a deliberate strategy to protect the jobs of our employees. The alternative of not discounting would lead to lower occupancies and by extension job losses.”
Mr. Ziadie said that gratuities are marginally lower this year compared to last year and management has already committed to a five percent across the board increase to the base salaries of all employees this year.
“This is significantly more than the annual increase that is offered elsewhere in the industry,” he noted.
“To further demonstrate our sensitivity to the welfare of our staff, management has also offered a one off payment of $100 to each team member.”
Meanwhile, at the protest, Mr. Taylor said workers eagerly want union representation, but he claimed management is denying line staff that opportunity.
He said that there were several attempts made by the workers to unionize, but management blocked those attempts.
However, Mr. Ziadie denied this, saying that the resort would support a union.
“The employees have a constitutional right anywhere we are to form a union,” he said. “We have always looked after our employees, and I think that our employees have always found that they had no need to form one.”
He said Sandals Royal Bahamian regards its employees as being the best in the local hospitality industry and has always taken their welfare seriously.
“It is for that reason our turnover rate at the resort has been consistently less than five percent in 10 years of operation,” Mr. Ziadie said. It is also the reason that we continue to be the employer of choice among local resort companies.
“The management of Sandals Royal Bahamian is committed to ongoing dialogue with our staff and remains confident that the current misunderstanding will be amicably resolved in the shortest possible time.”
By: Stephen Gay, The Bahama Journal
