The Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) officially launched its “Decent Work, Decent Life Campaign” on Friday, the day celebrated across the globe as World Day For Decent Work.
General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union, Toni Moore told members of the media gathered for a press conference at BWU Headquarters, that the BWU would be observing the global theme “End Corporate Greed”, by focusing on workers who face intimidation in the workplace because they are working under temporary contracts and as a result are being denied the right to job security, mainly for reasons of financial convenience to their employers.
“Today, with this launch on another World Day for Decent work, we are signalling a warning to employers…to fix it. Fix the situation or prepare to justify your position, not mainly to those workers and their families, but to the public of Barbados at large” Moore declared.
“This includes those employers who know that they are maintaining people in temporary employment where the jobs they are doing require persons in these positions to be permanent, and who are avoiding making workers permanent because they want to avoid the payment of benefits like pensions and medicals, for example. This call similarly goes to those employers who keep people in temporary and precarious positions, under the guise of trainee arrangements and apprenticeships,” the BWU general secretary added.
Over the coming weeks, she said, the public can look for the full roll out of the campaign via posters, social media forums, email blasts and a number of different initiatives. Moore stressed that the aim will be to ask poignant questions about the issue to unearth the negative work practices.
“For instance, workers may be asked: Do you have more than three years continuous service? Have you been temporary for a number of years, doing the same job as permanent workers, but without the same benefits? Have you been on repeated short-term contracts with the same employer? Has your contract been renewed over and over, even though your job is needed on an everyday basis?...Have you been a trainee or been receiving a trainee rate for over six months, without being told why?”
Stressing that some of these actions are not in keeping with some laws and Protocol 6 of the Social Partnership of Barbados and that at least one employer – a leader in education – has stepped forward to rectify such a situation for over 100 workers by mid-November, Moore noted that the aim will be to bring a halt to more of these abusive work practices. (RSM)
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