BWU holds ‘productive’ meeting with BTMI/BTPA staff

The Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) met with employees of the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI) and the Barbados Tourism Product Authority (BTPA) at the their office in One Barbados Place, Warrens, St. Michael yesterday, to discuss the transfer of the functions of the BTPA to the BTMI.

That meeting, which got started around 1:30 p.m. and finished just before 4:30 p.m., was described by General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), Senator Toni Moore, as “very productive”.

However, Moore indicated that the meeting was a general one which did not cover any timelines as to when the merger which has been placed on hold due to the intervention of the union will take place, or how many persons would likely be affected by way of redundancies.

It was in June last year that Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley announced during her mini-Budget presentation that the BTMI and the BTPA would eventually operate as one entity, as a partnership between Government and the private sector, to boost efficiency. The merger, which was slated for February 4th, 2019, is currently on hold however, as the Union stepped in, noting that it was not happy with the manner in which the Cabinet-approved process was being carried out.

Yesterday Moore told members of the media about the initial meeting with staff. “The meeting was a very productive one in my view. It was one where we received information that we didn’t have access to until today. So it would be fair to say that today’s meeting signaled the start of discussions relating to the restructuring process of the BTMI and the BTPA and we anticipate that those discussions will continue.”

She however maintained that there was no clear picture on when the actual restructuring will take place.

“Today’s meeting didn’t discuss timeliness. The meeting acknowledged that things should have been done differently and the parties were all committed to ensuring that the process and the discussions got under way in the manner that they should. So in today’s meeting, we didn’t consider any end date for the process, but as with the other instances of restructuring within state owned entities, we know that there is a certain urgency that is there. One of our roles is to ensure that that urgency is balanced with the need to follow the legislation and the processes that are in place for dealing with redundancies, in any form,” the BWU general secretary stated.

“What we were interested in – because the information that we had received only related to an implementation date and what was to take place, but our discussions started at the beginning, if we should put it that way; having an appreciation of the factors driving the decision and so on, so the foundation factors that led to the initial letter from the BTMI to us is where we started our discourse today.”

She then noted that it was a general discussion so the union was not able to garner how many persons would be affected by the exercise, but that numbers would likely come in future discussions.