Berger Paints ex‑workers win pay increase, reparations

Forty-four former workers of Berger Paints Barbados have secured a 12 per cent salary increase effective January 1, 2025, and will also receive reparations arising from a discrimination dispute involving the company.

The outcome was finalised this week following weeks of discussions between the Barbados Workers Union (BWU), the Department of Labour, and the ANSA McAL Group, which owns Berger.

The announcement was made by BWU General Secretary Toni Moore while speaking at the union’s Family and Picnic Affair held at the National Botanical Gardens on Friday.

“Now on top of the severance that was calculated before the increase, they [former workers] will get backpay for the last 16 months, and they will get their severance calculation adjusted to reflect it.”

Moore said the outcome was achieved through persistence, noting that many of the affected workers served the company for an average of 20 years.

She also disclosed that in 2022, the BWU uncovered what she described as a discriminatory incentive arrangement applied by the company.

“A performance incentive scheme was designed, and the performance incentive scheme was applied. People got payments once they passed the performance test, everybody except the people that they belong to the Barbados Workers’ Union.”

Moore confirmed that the company has now agreed to pay reparations to affected former employees.

She said the closure of the company increased the urgency of resolving the matter, with workers enduring lengthy negotiations over several weeks and multiple meetings.

“The company finally agreed we had to send in the Labour Department to check the books. They had to verify that our claim was right, and it was a true and honest claim, but yesterday [Thursday] at our meeting, we were able to get the company to agree that wherever the discrimination was meted out to the workers at Berger on account of them being union members, that reparation will be done and they will close that gap,” Moore declared.

However, Moore noted that discussions with another ANSA McAL subsidiary, Standards Distributors Limited, which has also ceased operations, were not as successful.

“BWU membership at Standards was very small, minuscule, and we fought for them to get a better deal or the best deal as the doors of that company were closing. We did not succeed.”

Moore also encouraged union members to speak up and advocate for themselves when they believe they are being treated unfairly, even if it means holding their own union representatives accountable.