The Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) has taken umbrage with remarks made by chairman of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) which suggested that the reported massive layoff of workers at the Sandals hotels was the “norm” for this time of the year.
“The description of these layoffs as ‘seasonal’ by the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association cannot and must not be accepted as merely ‘the norm’. This issue is not just about industry patterns or business as usual; it’s about the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of Barbadians, many of whom are mothers and fathers striving to provide for their families and ensure their children’s education in an industry that increasingly, where better can be done, refuses to provide workers with job security,” it stated in a press release yesterday.
The Sandals chain operates two hotels in Barbados – Sandals Royal and Sandals Resort, both in Dover, Christ Church.
On Tuesday, in another section of the media, in response to reports that Sandals had laid off 200 employees, Javon Griffith, the newly appointed BHTA chairman, was quoted as saying that the redundancies reflect the annual downturn in business faced by the wider industry and that it was “pretty standard across the industry at this time of the year”. (MB)
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