“My whole thing about this is, I can’t breathe. This thing has me disturbed. It’s just not fair. It has me sick. I can’t breathe. I feel like George Floyd . . . . They have the upper hand and they have their knee in my neck. All I want is somebody to hear our plight and turn this situation around.” – Former employee of The Club Barbados Resort speaking to the media on Tuesday.
Some of the former workers of the 150 staff complement at The Club Barbados Resort staged a protest outside the property, demanding answers and wanting monies owed. The George Floyd analogy painted a grim, hurtful picture of what these workers and, by extension, their households are currently facing.
There is a school of thought that for every worker you should multiply the figure by at least four to get an idea of the lives impacted by the job loss. So with that theory in mind, The Club Barbados employees represent about 600 people.
Some may have divorced themselves from the issue, seeing it as a tourism sector challenge. But the unemployment figures and NIS numbers paint a different picture. This economic calamity has affected the entire workforce, spanning many sectors.
It is also easy for those in “secure” jobs or those “living well” to not be overly concerned as fellow Barbadians continue to suffer while being forced to take to the streets to have their voices heard. That is why the George Floyd analogy used by the former employee is so poignant.
The George Floyd incident in the United States, caught on video, evoked strong emotions in Barbados. Now, here we have a worker applying that racial incident to her plight as a worker in a predominantly black society. Oh, the irony!
At the time, some might have brushed off Tuesday’s protest as an isolated incident. However, a day later, workers of Caribbean Aircraft Handling (CAH) staged a protest demanding their money and better communication from their former employers as well. Former line crewman at CAH, Albert King, complained they had worked too hard to be treated in that way.
“We have made it happen for the company all of these years. We have worked short-staffed and short of equipment. I understand that there is a pandemic; it’s worldwide. But you have people here like me that suffering, with rent to pay, family to take care of, a young 18-month-old child, and can’t get no money.
“I cannot tell Barbados Light & Power that I am waiting on CAH. I can’t take leaves and rocks and go and pay them. My water bill . . . everything on notice to get cut off. If they know that they were waiting for funds from the Government, communicate to us in a decent and timely manner . . . ,” he complained.
And though the COVID-19 period is unprecedented and we understand that employers too are trying to wade through this precarious period, we cannot help but think that a little communication can go a long way.
Those who are parents know that one of the worst feelings is not to be able to provide the basics for your charges. While adults can adapt and bear the brunt of the hardship, it is always difficult to try and shield young ones from the reality of no food, no shelter, no clothing.
We cannot in good faith say that the workers’ actions were hasty or ill-advised. After all, who feels it knows it. These protests appear to be a manifestation of the workers at their boiling point. Indeed, displaced workers have been complaining for some time now. Workers seem to generally want their severance.
Sadly, Government’s attempt to give employers more legroom by extending the 13-week period to claim severance to 22 weeks, does little to serve the interest of the workers.
Last month, 40 workers of the famed Brown Sugar Restaurant were at their wits’ end too. Axed chef Richard Doyle lamented: “It hasn’t been easy because it’s just me. Food has to be bought and bills have to be paid, and we weren’t getting the NIS money as often as you were supposed to get it. Sometimes eight and nine
weeks would pass without any money and it wasn’t easy at all.”
How many more must demand that their former employers give them an ear? How many more workers must cry out for help? How many more must stage protests and carry placards? How many more must beg the Prime Minister, the Minister of Labour or interested union leaders to intervene on their behalf? How many more must tell their stories to the Press while losing a bit of their pride and dignity while doing so?
RPB, in his 1989 classic and winning Pic-O-De-Crop song De Country En Well, said: “The hands, they work very hard, sometimes they end up in casts; not fully respected for their tasks. The hands are the working class.”
The reality is that 31 years later, this statement still holds true. Although employees work hard, give their best years to a company, help that company turn profits year after year, there continues to be a blatant lack of respect for workers by some employees.
We hope and pray that the pressure of the knee in these workers’ necks can be relieved in short order. As we have witnessed with the Black Lives
Matter protests around the world, when people have reached a boiling point, when they believe no one is listening, when they think no one cares about their plight, emotions run very high.
Vexed and perplexed people take to the streets. In his song, Them Belly Full, the late great Robert Nesta Marley sang: “A hungry mob is an angry mob.” A word to the wise should be sufficient.
