The Bahamas Hotel Catering & Allied Workers Union (BHCAWU) signed a new industrial agreement with Club Med Columbus Isle on Tuesday.
At the signing event, BHCAWU President, Darren Woods spoke about the negotiation process. He said, “this negotiations would have been, yes, difficult but much easier because we had a blueprint. Let’s take for instance the health and welfare, the pension is a particular percentage the health and welfare is another percentage. And so because they wanted to come at one percentage for the pension fund we said to them, no, there is a standard that you have to come in at. So what we were able to do is use the percentage from the health and welfare put it with the pension fund and bring the health and welfare in at a later time. So there was some maneuvering and jockeying just so we could get to a point where we have an industrial agreement that we believe in something that we all can live with and something that is beneficial to the employees at the end of the day.”
Club Med Regional Human Resources Director, Angeles Martinez signed on behalf of the resort property. Martinez spoke about some of Club Med’s concerns about infrastructure on San Salvador where the hotel is located. She said, “I cannot tell you right now that we are 100% satisfied with what it has to offer in terms of health benefits to call it something. It is a small island and we do have certain priorities that we need to take care of but what I can tell you right now is that the government has been very helpful in ensuring that this continues to move forward. Cause it is true that we need to ensure that no only our guests but also our employees are in the safest possible environment and in order to get that done we do need the help of the government but as I mentioned it’s a work in progress and they have been very supportive.”
The new agreement includes guaranteed five day work week, four weeks Christmas bonus, sick pay, emergency leave and pension benefits.
