Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, tired of union threats to destabilize the country, warned BTC workers that if they walk off the job, they may not have one when they return.
Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham is tired of union threats to destabilize the country.
If BTC workers walk off the job, there is “no guarantee” of keeping their jobs, Mr Ingraham warned workers.
“The truth of the matter is, that for those who are employed at BTC and elsewhere in the public sector, I wish to caution them not to follow the current plans of the president of the NCTU and BCPOU – Ms Jennifer Isaacs Dotson and Mr Bernard Evans – because when you walk off your job, if you do, there is no
guarantee that you can come back to that job – no guarantee,” said Mr Ingraham, in a get tough speech to Free National Movement supporters in Grand Bahama.
Bahamians throughout the archipelago welcomed the comments, as many of them are as tired of union threats as the Prime Minister is.
Speaking at a pre-Christmas breakfast held at Mary Star of the Sea School auditorium in Freeport, Grand Bahama on Saturday morning, Mr Ingraham said:
“Jobs are scarce. Jobs are hard to find. And no one is able to stop you from cutting off your nose to spite your face; that is your face. But at the end of the day, you will not have a nose – that is the judgment you can make,” he said.
Union “noise and threats,” said Mr Ingraham, “that does not get anywhere with me.”
The Prime Minister said that Cable & Wireless originally wanted to disengage up to 30 percent of the BTC workforce upon purchasing the telecommunications company.
Ingraham said that government extended C&W’s exclusivity for services to three years, from two years, specifically to ensure that workers would remain employed.
He also said the call for staff reductions would have come anyway as the present Bahamian management of the company proposed that as many as 300 employees be let go.
Mr Ingraham said that the government is going to go ahead and do “what we think is the right thing for the Bahamas.”
The PLP, of course, jumped all over Mr Ingraham for his comments.
