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The scourge of short-term contracts being used to threaten the job security of employees must be quickly addressed, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kerrie Symmonds said Saturday.
Addressing the Barbados Workers’ Union 82nd Annual Delegates Conference at Solidarity House, Symmonds responded to what he saw as the morally unfair practice of employers giving out small short-term contracts, specifically three-month contracts, that offered no form of job security for employees.
“The practical reality is that a three-month contract offers no worker any form of job security, full stop. Nor does it offer that individual any negotiating power with financial institutions so that that individual can get that which all of us want to be able to achieve,” he said.
“The ownership of a house, the ownership of a motor car … that three-month contract will not be entertained by the financial institutions in Barbados.”
Symmonds went on to say that other employees have gone a step further, using these short-term contracts to keep their team “in check” if they were dissatisfied with their existing employment.
“Ill-intentioned employers are now holding that idea of a three-month contract like a sword of Damocles over the heads of the workers in Barbados. Simply put, and I want to be very clear about it, if I have a three-month contract and I complain that I should get a better type of deal, then the idea of that contract being rolled over for another three months is held over my head like a threat.
“The effective impact of it, is that the worker is being told ‘be quiet’, ‘shut ya mouth’, ‘accept the three months, or else get nothing and seek life elsewhere’. That is effectively what the worker is being told. We owe it to ourselves as a nation to set a moral minimum in some of these things, and to stand up and speak out in order to hold these things to be utterly and completely unacceptable in Barbados.”
Meanwhile, the minister also took the banking sector to task for what he saw as their refusal to make services easier for Barbadians to access, despite the high profits they make.
“The reward for faithful support to our banking community [shouldn’t] be an ever increasing difficulty in accessing basic services, such as the opening of a bank account. The concept of an ease of doing business cannot simply be a preserve which is set aside and held dear in order for us to look after and cater to the comfort and the convenience of foreign investors. We want the foreign investors, but it cannot be all about them, it’s about you too.
“It means looking after the facilitation of the ordinary affairs and the ordinary business of ordinary people in Barbados who are trying to make a living in this country,” Symmonds stressed. (SB)
