Union threatens to strike if the company does not at least offer a counterproposal for an industrial agreement with its workers within what amounts to a two-week deadline.
The warning came Thursday afternoon from union chief Obie Ferguson, who told the Journal he had spoken to the Director of Labour Harcourt Brown earlier in the day about concerns raised on behalf of the Bahamas Industrial, Manufacturing and Allied Workers Union, which represents the workers at Morton.
Mr. Ferguson said the director had assured him the matter would be looked into on Thursday.
“I can certainly say with some degree of certainty that if this state of affairs continues to persist, where there is absolutely no respect for the trade union and their leaders, then industrial action in my view would be almost inevitable, and it will be inevitable in this case because of the attitude of the employer,” Mr. Ferguson said.
The Journal also spoke on Thursday with BIMAWU Secretary General Jennifer Brown at Morton Bahamas Ltd. in Inagua.
According to Ms. Brown, the union had presented Morton with a proposed contract in August 2005 before their contract expired on September 30. From that time, she said, the union has had no word from the company on a counterproposal.
Ms. Brown told the Journal that negotiating the first contract had taken three years, and the companyﾒs suggestion of negotiating one day or two at a time instead of making a counterproposal BIMAWU executives could study, was unacceptable.
Mr. Ferguson said the workers at Morton have been put on notice that if no reasonable response has come from the company within an acceptable timeframe ﾖ one to two weeks, he said ﾖ the union is satisfied that the Bahamian public would “support the position that we will have to take in Inagua.”
By “reasonable response,” Mr. Ferguson said he meant either a counterproposal to the unionﾒs suggested contract, or dates for negotiations to begin.
Asked whether the union had given the company a deadline, Mr. Ferguson said “we have not, because industrial relations is about being sensible and being reasonable, and we would want to give them a reasonable period of time.”
“If they donﾒt respond within a reasonable period of time, obviously we will be left with no alternative but to take industrial action. That is almost a certainty if they fail to do that which is proper,” Mr. Ferguson threatened.
Mr. Ferguson explained that he had advised the union at Morton not to strike after they voted to do just that on September 8, 2005. Mr. Ferguson said he had made that call as the unionﾒs lawyer.
“It was on my advice as the attorney that they ought not actually strike at that time and I made that recommendation to them on the basis that I was satisfied that there was reasonable grounds for me to conclude that the company intended to meet and to begin negotiation with the union in good faith,” he explained.
The Journal was unable to reach Director Brown Thursday afternoon.
Morton Managing Director Glen Bannister said he would respond to the unionﾒs allegations in writing, but up to press time his response had not been received.
Mr. Ferguson is head of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas Trade Union Congress, an umbrella organization for a number of trade unions in the Bahamas. Two of those unions are currently involved in contract negotiations ﾖ the Bahamas Hotel Managerial Association (BHMA) at the Radisson Cable Beach, and the BIMAWU at Morton Bahamas.
He confirmed that both unions are currently negotiating new contracts, but claimed that those contract negotiations were not a factor in the concerns he raised over the Series 2102 biometric time clock at the Radisson Cable Beach earlier this week.
“Itﾒs just unfortunate that every time thereﾒs something to do with workers, there has to be some sort of industrial action, some sort of strike, in order for things to happen,” Mr. Ferguson said.
The trade unionist again mentioned the biometric system, which stores a three-dimensional image of two fingers for identification purposes, but according to the hotel and the police expert that explained the system to the workers and managers at the hotel, does not take fingerprints.
“Wellﾅwe need experts, the people who know what is going on,” was Mr. Fergusonﾒs response.
Pressed on the issue that Detective Sergeant Rodney Barnes is an expert, Mr. Ferguson responded that he wanted to have representatives from the International Labour Organization (ILO) or someone from the manufacturer of the system to explain the system to BHMA members.
Mr. Ferguson insisted that he wants an expert that he accepts to certify the security and necessity of the stored information used by the System 2102.
By: Quincy Parker, The Bahama Journal
