A strike is the last thing this country needs.
Telecommunications giant LIME Telecommunications giant LIME in a statement issued this evening, said it regarded the threat of a “national strike” as “an irresponsible approach to a process which has been followed in full and has been ongoing for the past six months”.
It added that this was especially so sincethe Social Partnership clearly states that six weeks is the normal timeframe for such negotiations to be completed.
Just yesterday the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) called on LIME to retract the 97 letters of dismissal issued to staff last week or it will launch a national strike.
Following a meeting scheduled since December 31, 2012, that was held yesterday between the BWU, led by General Secretary Sir Roy Trotman and Minister of Labour Esther Byer-Suckoo, Sir Roy told reporters that while the union understood that industrial action should be a last resort, it had taken “enough insults” on the matter.
LIME’s managing director Alex McDonald was absent from the meeting.
“In the midst of a deep recession a national strike is the last thing the country needs when businesses and employees are struggling to maintain jobs,” stated the release from LIME.
LIME also noted its disappointment with suggestions that the company’s management blatantly refused to attend a meeting with Minister of Labour Dr Esther Byer- Suckoo and the Barbados Workers’ Union yesterday at the Ministry of Labour. The meeting was at the request of the Minister and was set to discuss Job Evaluation and not recent redundancies as is being suggested.
In the press statement, the company said the Minister was informed by letter on Monday morning that LIME would not be represented at the meeting. The letter, which was copied to the BWU General Secretary Sir Roy Trotman, explained that the company was not in a position to deliver a report on Job Evaluation requested by the Minister and would therefore wish to establish a new date for the meetings to further discuss this matter.
“We must advise that the data which you deemed as being crucial to our discussions is yet to be compiled, as in the past few days leading up to our tentative meeting date, we have been crippled by staff shortages which meant that resources that would have been focused on this exercise had to be re-allocated to other more pressing tasks,” said the letter in part.
It added that the company would not be “flagrantly absent from a meeting without good reason”, adding “since we were not in a position to present the minister with the data she requested we informed her and committed ourselves to agreeing a new date”. (PR)
