PM warns severance pay ‘dodgers’

Prime Minister Mia Mottley has warned corporate Barbados, especially tourism industry players, to pay their workers’ severance once they can afford to do so.

Speaking shortly after the end of a meeting with several ministers as well as staff and union representatives of the security firm G4S over the ongoing pay row, the Prime Minister declared: “If you are the beneficiary of profits and dividends over the years, you have a responsibility to be there when profits and dividends have gone, to see the other side of the pendulum when workers are facing difficult times.

“You must bear in mind that it is the blood, sweat, tears and efforts of the workers that have made the profits possible. So with that in mind, you have to carry the workers along.”

While Mottley reiterated that her Government was on the workers’ side and would see to it that they got their severance payments, she urged employers not to leave their staff by the wayside when their actions showed that they could indeed compensate them.

“Government will stand by the workers for whom we have to pay severance in the tourism sector,” the PM said. “I have said this over and over, but I have equally said that where companies can afford and are simply not paying, Government will act with absolute dispatch to recover any funds that will have to be dispensed as severance.

“Now, where a company is genuinely bankrupt we will accept that, that is what the Severance Payment Fund was set up to accommodate, but when people are buying assets and took delivery of them up to this week, and when they express an interest in buying government property.

“You cannot tell me you cannot afford to pay workers when you can afford to buy government property and we are very clear that you have to put workers in front and centre of what you prepare to do in this season.

“And the acquisition of property while leaving workers at the side of the road for the Government to deal with will not be tolerated, especially from those from among us who know our norms and our laws.”
(DH)