Two trade union leaders have expressed reservations about the changes to the Severance Pay Act now making their way through both Houses of Parliament as Government steps in to help hotels overcome a massive payout bill owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Opposition Senator Caswell Franklyn declared: “This bill is a “puzzlement” to me. The first part of the puzzle is that it is an act to amend the Severance Pay Act, but there is no constitutional right to severance. You have a right to it when you apply, but no one under the COVID-19 state of emergency has attained this right yet.
“I understand answering to the ‘crack of the whip’, to those who control the Government from behind. The other day I heard a message from a hotelier who was ‘carrying on’ because he gave Government instructions to talk about this last week and they did not. If that person understood the Severance Payment Act, they would do nothing.
“We are in a state of emergency, Cabinet can do anything in the interest of the country, so they could have said we will suspend the provisions of the Severance Payment Act and that would be it.”
Both Senator Franklyn, head of the Unity Workers Union and Senator Toni Moore, the General Secretary of the Barbados Workers Union, spoke of the inadequacy of the Severance Pay Tribunal to hear any cases that may arise coming out of the pandemic.
Toni Moore
“There are currently 1,765 cases pending at the Severance Pay Tribunal, some of them dating back more than seven years,” Senator Moore revealed while Senator Franklyn said that he had cases pending for employees at the former Grand Barbados Hotel since 2012, some of whom have since died.
He said these tribunals should be better organised. “In the 1980s the Barbados Labour Party passed a law called the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act, which should have taken care of tribunals including the Severance Pay Tribunal and Employee Rights Tribunal, but it was never brought into force,” the opposition senator said. “It would have set up a proper full-time system because these tribunals depend on retired people and those who can only take a little time out of their own law practices and they do not pay much.”
Senator Moore spoke passionately about injustices she said she was seeing in the business community. Some frontline workers at supermarkets during the pandemic were now facing dismissal since the country began reopening for business, she said.
She told the Senate: “Injustice and mistrust (emerge) when supermarket workers, who were being called heroes during our lockdown, were getting laid off once the country started reopening, for example at Massy and A1.
“Then some of the people behind the same supermarkets carrying out those unfair practices would want to tell people we should support Black Lives Matter.
“Black people cannot breathe in these workplaces either, because barring all the praise and clapping and songs of tribute, these frontline workers went from hero to zero in Barbados.”
Senator Moore continued: “Labour was brought into the tourism task force discussion at the 11th hour, just before some properties were expecting the 13 weeks to be triggered. Ironically, we find ourselves here with a Government which knows how to communicate well, yet we have failed to take truth to the people so they can decide in their best interest.
“There are a number of workers in hotels that have signalled that they do not want severance because they do not expect any jobs coming in the next 13 weeks or beyond that.
“Once 26 weeks of unemployment insurance expires, and they do not see any job prospects, it makes no sense taking that $20,000, $30,000 or $60,000 in severance pay because those workers have mortgages and other commitments that may exceed the lump sum by far, and when they use that up, what will they do?”
The BWU General Secretary, who also sits on the board of the National Insurance Scheme (NIS), added: “I see the labour market trending towards development and investment capital but not paying any attention to workers rights. I sit on the NIS board and I know if a high number of workers had to trigger their rights to severance pay, these employers would say they cannot meet it, which means the NIS would then be responsible.
“During a crisis we are required to be vigilant, which means not only being watchful, but all of us as leaders must not allow ourselves to be preoccupied by distractions and bullies, because if we do that we might miss the boat on issues of greater importance.”
