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#BTEditorial – Barbadian workers deserve better treatment

by Barbados Today
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It is about time!

The country’s largest, mainly private sector-based labour union has finally come out of what appeared to be a quasi comatose state and issued an unequivocal statement that it is prepared to really fight for this island’s workers.

The country’s labour force has been quietly trudging along. Most who operate at the bottom of the income ladder and even those in the middle-income group have been concentrating on retention of their jobs.

Who could blame them for accepting conditions and pay rates with which they are not happy? The labour force is well aware of the struggles they endured during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was the services sector that suffered the greatest as thousands lost their jobs and had to resort to accepting care packages of vital food and toiletries from the state.

As proud Barbadians, it was an occurrence to which most households were unaccustomed. However, it represented just how challenging the environment had become. The government initially planned to distribute 60,000 of the hampers but had to expand that number as demand grew.

That was 2021 and we have since recovered from one of the most debilitating periods in our recent history. Most workers have returned to the job market. Others found that the small businesses they established during the COVID-19 pandemic brought them greater satisfaction and joy than being an employee of someone else.

As much as the country is hailing the fact that “We Outside!” again, the exhilaration has seemingly not extended to fast-food workers, supermarket and gas station employees and others in similar posts. Most of all, the Barbadians doing the back-breaking work in hotels and restaurants are crying out against exploitation.

Having taken to the streets during the pandemic to protest the awful treatment from some hotel owners and operators, it seems too many players in the sector have returned to their old exploitative and dehumanizing ways.

The tourism sector, regarded as the anchor of economic activity in Barbados is not presenting the best image of itself.

The problem is that word is spreading among young, well-qualified Barbadians that the local hospitality sector might not be where they should hang their employment hopes.

If the sector is not careful, it will continue to struggle to find quality workers with a commitment to service. Just as petrol stations suffer from very high turnover due to low pay and unfavourable conditions of work, the tourism and hospitality sector is quickly gaining an unenviable reputation among job seekers.

No wonder some of the sector’s best employees chose to jump ship for opportunities in other countries.

During a press conference this week staged by the Barbados Workers’ Union’s (BWU) high command, they flexed their muscle and called out errant employers.

BWU General Secretary and Member of Parliament  Toni Moore has issued her first warning shot. 

“We wrote them signalling very clearly that we’ve been warning for years that workers would reach a breaking point. . . . “But we have also indicated to them that where the approach we are seeing that companies can do better by their workers and they refuse to do better by their workers, the executive council of the BWU is willing to mobilise its strength behind the workers in order to get solutions that are not being met with using the more dignified approaches which we prefer.”

Those are fighting words.

Much of the industrial action we have seen in recent times has been initiated by the aggrieved workers and supported by the unions and not the other way around.

We do not encourage an environment of conflict and mayhem. However,  this country’s workers are reaching the end of their tether, and something will have to give.

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