Sugar workers made redundant

MORE THAN 50 employees of the closed Andrews Sugar Factory are to be made redundant with effect from today.
This follows lengthy redundancy consultations from June 2013 between the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), the Sugar Industries Staff Association (SISA) and the Barbados Agricultural Management Co. Ltd. (BAMC).
This was revealed earlier today in a release from the BAMC which noted that Andrews factory had been closed “to facilitate the construction of a new state-of-the-art multi-purpose factory that will help to transform the local sugar industry to that of a sugar cane industry”.
As a result, the only sugar factory in operation for this year’s crop is Portvale Factory, St James. 
“Of the 121 employees at Andrews, 57 employees were made redundant and these employees will receive a redundancy payment in accordance with legislation. In addition, employees have been offered access to an employee assistance programme and will continue to benefit from the programme following the closure of Andrews Factory.  
“The Company was able to mitigate the impact of the redundancy as employees were transferred to Portvale Factory, while in the interim, other employees came to the end of their fixed term contracts or retired,” the BAMC said.
BAMC general manager Leslie Parris, technical manager of factories John Goodman and human resources manager Jacqueline Belgrave met with the employees this morning to inform them of the arrangements for their redundancy. 
The release said official communication related to the matter was also issued to the relevant trade unions this morning. (PR/NB)