The Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) has formally made a case to Government to ensure Berger Paints is not allowed to dissolve its Barbados operations until all outstanding disputes involving former employees are settled.
General secretary Toni Moore said that while the company had physically closed its doors yesterday, serious questions remained over workers’ entitlements, unresolved wage matters, incentive payments and calculations connected to final payouts.
Speaking after a meeting with Minister of Labour Colin Jordan, Moore said the union had petitioned his Ministry to use the available machinery of the State to prevent the company from completing the dissolution process until justice was done for workers.
“Today, Berger closes its doors in Barbados, but we just want to make a signal that the issue of workers and their entitlements and the fairness that should meet them, we are not closed on this,” she said.
She explained that over the past six weeks, the company, the union and the Ministry of Labour had been engaged in conciliation discussions aimed at resolving matters directly linked to the closure.
Among the issues still on the table, she said, were at least three matters before the Employment Rights Tribunal, unresolved wage negotiations and a dispute over incentive payments.
“Workers who are members of the Barbados Workers’ Union did not receive incentive payments that people who are not members of the Barbados Workers’ Union would have received from Berger,” Moore disclosed.
She said those matters had not been reflected in the payments workers received yesterday.
“The workers have received payments that do not relate to the outstanding wage negotiations, they do not relate to our outstanding claim for incentive payment.”
She said the union had also updated the Minister on concerns raised by workers during the course of the day after they received final documentation from Berger.
While declining to go deeply into specifics, she said the BWU had already identified “a number of irregularities in the calculations” as presented to the workers in their documentation. She stressed that their request to Government centred on the distinction between a company ceasing day-to-day operations and being legally dissolved. “The dissolution of a business is a process. Because you physically close doors it doesn’t mean that the business ceases to exist,” Moore said. The BWU, she added, wanted the necessary letters sent to all relevant Government agencies, including the Corporate Affairs and Intellectual Property Office, to ensure the company could not be fully wound up before the disputes were addressed.
“The business closes today, but the business cannot close when we have unfinished business with them,” she declared. Moore warned that if a company was allowed to dissolve too quickly, workers could be placed at a disadvantage in pursuing claims already before the tribunal or challenging severance and payment calculations.
“If a company is not allowed to dissolve, it means that the matters remain open before the Employment Rights Tribunal. It means that if there is a challenge to the severance calculations and to the different payments that workers should have gotten, there can be no contention with the company taking a stance that it does not have to address the issues because legally it is closed,” Moore said.
She pointed out that the Berger matter had highlighted areas of Barbados’ labour laws that might need strengthening, particularly where companies seek to exit while worker grievances remained unresolved.
She added the union believed it was important to pursue the matter fully, as failure to do so could encourage similar conduct elsewhere. (CLM)
