Reflecting on the abuse that employees of Solomon’s Mines received at the hands of Mark Finlayson and family, City Market workers are expressing concern that they may lose their jobs and the pension money owed them.
The prediction that Mark Finlayon will run City Market into the ground is starting to look pretty accurate. Finlayson, whose family destroyed the once venerable Solomons Mines retail chain, has been at the helm of Ciy Market since mid-last year when his family’s hlolding company Trans-Island Traders purchased the food retailer form a Trinidadian company that was forced to fail and pushed out of the country by scurrilous means.
This appears to be a tactic often used by crooked lawyers and businessmen in The Bahamas – to invite foreign companies to the island nation, then bend the laws and work behind the scenes to ensure the failure of the company and its eventual sale to Bahamian owners.
A former Governmor General once famously used the tactic to grab an insurance company from foreign owners.
Now, City Market employees are questioning the company’s direction, following the shuffling of 70 workers from recently closed stores and several labor and pension issues stemming from that action.
The Nassau Guardian reports that they have received a letter from City Market employees expressing concern about their financial entitlement should they choose to leave the company.
“The first exodus of employees were given their pension money in full,” said the letter titled, ‘A Cry for Help by City Market Employees’.
“However, the most recent group of employees set to leave the company are being told that due to worsening financial conditions at the company, they can expect to recieve only a fraction of the money owed them.
The letter writer points out that the company’s perilous financial state has nothing to do with employees’ pension funds. Pension money was put in place by former owners and should not be touched by the Finlayson family.
Meanwhile, remaining employees are working reduced hours wit some working only eight hours per week.
At least one employee feels that reducing the hours is a ploy by the company to get people to quit their jobs, alleviating the requirement to pay severance pay.
“People are ready to go, but they want their packages. We heard at first that they intended to let people go, but they couldn’t afford to let them go,” one employee told the Guardian.
