Although a $17 million five year agreement was signed between the Bahamas Hotel Employers Association and the Bahamas Catering and Allied Workers Union on Jan. 28, President of the BHCAWU, Pat Bain, admitted on Wednesday that employers and workers are still not working together peacefully.
“As it is right now, there still is a certain level of unrest and unease, so I won’t sit here and give anybody the impression that we are lovey-dovey because we are not, so we have to work at getting back to at least the standards that we were before when contract negotiations started,” he said.
Mr. Bain was a special guest on Love 97’s Issues of the Day Radio talk show with host Mike Smith.
According to Mr. Bain, there is a whole lot of animosity that “went down” during the 16-month negotiation period, in addition to negative charges. He mentioned that the atmosphere is still “tense” and with trying to implement the new agreement, the union’s biggest concern is with middle management and their views on how the contract should be implemented. He further stated that beyond these issues, a lot of “ill feelings” still exist.
The BHCAWU President noted that members are watching to see how leaders of the union and leaders of the industry are interacting with each other. He added that “cooling heads” must prevail until most of the “tense” feelings, which exist, are gone.
However, the Jan. 28 signing between the BHCAWU and the BHEA has brought to an end, 16 months of contentious negotiations. The contract provides for an across the board increase in salaries for hotel workers, retroactive to Jan. 7, 2003 and is valid to Jan. 7, 2008.
Mr. Bain explained that the signing took so long because the union wanted to make some fundamental changes to its former contract and employers also wanted to make some changes that were in their best interest. He added however, that both sides disagreed and nobody was prepared to give grounds on certain areas.
“Finally, after an exchange of words, we were able to find compromises on some issues in the new agreement and then we came to the question of salaries,” he said.
According to Mr. Bain, the union wanted to ensure that it obtained the best terms possible for its members, and also ensure that it had its membership covered to improve their economic position in addition to improving all contracts going forward.
“No matter what contract you negotiate, you get what you negotiate at the end of the day. The previous contract had some defects in it that we wanted to improve on and so we had differences of opinions,” Mr. Bain explained.
“It took 18 months because we were not going to fall victim to any offer that was just put on the table and the offer that was put on the table was an insult to this organization and this is why we ended up at 16 months,” he said.
Mr. Bain further stated that the existing wage minimum level was $236 a week and the Union was trying to improve this amount to ensure that workers were able to match their spending power with the “cost of living concept” and a “livable wage.”
By Tamara McKenzie, The Nassau Guardian/B>
