Trade unionist says Government should pay severance to hotel workers

Government has been urged to take full responsibility for the severance payments crisis affecting hundreds of hotel workers across the island.

This is the demand of veteran trade unionist and Opposition Senator Caswell Franklyn, who argued that temporary adjustments to the Severance Payments Act made under the current administration are exposing workers to gross exploitation by their former employers.

He was reacting to a recent decision by The Club Barbados Resort and Spa to go back on a promise to pay severance to approximately 150 staffers laid off at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Franklyn had consistently opposed the sunset legislation which granted just four weeks for workers sent home in March and April to claim severance, after 22 weeks of being laid off. Under the original legislation, axed employees had a 365-day period to trigger their severance. For most workers laid off since the national shutdowns, the window of opportunity expired between mid-September and October.

Relying on promises of severance from their former employer on November 21, ex-employees of The Club Barbados opted not to trigger severance payments from the NIS.

Adding insult to injury was an amendment to the original legislation that prevents workers laid off during the sunset period from approaching the Employment Rights Tribunal (ERT) to enforce severance pay.

As a result, Franklyn suggested that The Club Barbados and other hotels were now under no legal obligation to hand over the promised severance that would ordinarily have been owed to its former employees.

In fact, the Unity Workers’ Union (UWU) boss has accused the Government of moving swiftly to protect the economic interests of employers while ignoring the possible repercussion for workers.

“If you look at the Principal Act, Section 38, it says that any question arising under the Act as to the rights of any employee under the Severance Payments [Act] or as to the amount of the severance payment, shall, in accordance with regulations made under this part, be referred to and determined by a tribunal constituted by the sixth schedule,” Franklyn recalled on Wednesday’s edition of VOB’s Down to Brasstacks programme.

“But the amendments have wiped out the tribunal, so the tribunal cannot hear these matters. So when the employer doesn’t pay, you cannot take it to the tribunal. So where will you get the money from?

“Government has moved to protect the employers and has not moved to protect the workers. In fact, Government has disadvantaged the workers so badly that the employers are now taking advantage of them and abusing them,” the trade unionist contended.

In the case of The Club Barbados, axed staff were promised severance payments in two instalments – half in October and the rest in November. Days ago, however, they were informed that they would receive 25 per cent of the monies owed minus the sum of any outstanding loans given to them from the employer, leaving them at the mercy of the National Insurance (NIS) to claim for the remaining 75 per cent.

“Government has to fix this, even if it means that the Government has to pay the severance, because they went ahead and took away the right to severance for these people,” Franklyn insisted.

On Tuesday, protesting ex-workers were met at the Sunset Crest, St James hotel by officers from the NIS Fund who reportedly presented them with forms to file severance payments claims at the ERT.

But Franklyn, who claims to have carried out consultations with affected workers, suggested that the measures being taken by NIS officials was an exercise in futility given that the ERT cannot hear their matters.

“I do not know what these people are doing. They just deceived a whole bunch of people,” said Franklyn.

“If you can collect the paperwork and process them, but you can’t send them to a tribunal, why are they taking applications from people? There is nothing in the law right now… that allows anybody to take claims to the tribunal for people who were laid off as a consequence of the COVID situation,” the union leader reiterated.

(kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)