Fairness for all

BWU tells BEC workers need protection from unscrupulous bosses too By Sheria Brathwaite The Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) has charged that many employees who quit without giving due notice were going that route because they were treated unfairly by their employers, as she insisted that workers need protection from unscrupulous bosses. General Secretary Toni Moore took that position as she asserted that “the vast majority” of employers were not compliant with the Employment Rights Act (ERA). Her comments in a statement issued on Thursday came in response to Executive Director of the Barbados Employers Confederation (BEC) Sheena Mayers-Granville who told Barbados TODAY last week that some aspects of the current labour laws were lopsided and changes should be made, including to ensure business owners can seek redress when workers without giving notice as legally required. “The BWU fully appreciates the need for notice periods to be given to reduce the impact of employees leaving unexpectedly without providing requisite notice. It impacts the company’s ability to plan and places a burden on coworkers who are forced directly or indirectly to pick up the slack,” Moore said. However, she added, “there is an uncanny correlation between workers who are treated unfairly and workers who will not give their employers the requisite notice”. “The BWU would be bold enough to throw a challenge out to the BEC to conduct a survey with respect to the companies that are to the front of the row demanding redress when workers quit their jobs without the requisite notice vis-à-vis the companies that are at the front of the line at the Employment Rights Tribunal as respondents in unfair dismissal claims. It is time that we start to address the root issues in this country,” the BWU boss asserted. She added that there were several employers in breach of workers’ rights – restricting employees from vacation and lunch breaks, not rostering them properly, having them work more than the accepted 40-hour work week and not paying them proper wages – and they should not get any redress when workers leave. For those reasons, she said, the BEC’s claims of the labour laws being lopsided were not rooted in fairness. “Employers and employees are not equal, so to propose a balancing of the legislation would be to do a disservice to employees across Barbados. Workers need to be protected. The Employment Rights Act was proclaimed more than a decade ago and the vast majority of employers are still not in compliance with the law,” the trade unionist contended. As it relates to Section 31 of the ERA which requires a consultation period of six weeks before redundancy takes effect when 10 per cent of the workforce is impacted, Mayers-Granville said that business owners wanted the legislation to provide for a minimum number of employees rather than a percentage. However, Moore opposed the suggested change. “The only reform to the provision we support is to remove the percentage in its entirety to, in effect, require consultation for any number of employees to be made redundant. Our position is grounded in the impact that redundancy has on an employee who does not see it coming . . . . The consultation period is a means for employees to prepare mentally and in practical terms for the significant change to life where there is no guaranteed income, and it should be done in every possible circumstance,” she said. Moore added: “Legislators ought to be mindful not to chip away at the rights of employees for the comfort of employers who fail to do right by workers. An employee has the right to offer an explanation or a reason for their actions before a decision is made to discipline them . . . . Some unscrupulous employers would place warnings on individuals’ files that the individual had no prior knowledge of, amongst other unscrupulous practices. The rationale that employers should be permitted to proceed with discipline and the employee thereafter be allowed to appeal reaffirms that the submission from the BEC is not rooted in fairness but in finding ease for unscrupulous employers.” sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb]]>