ERA creating headaches

THE Employment Rights Act (ERA) is creating some headaches for employers across the island.

So explained Executive Director of the Barbados Employers’ Confederation (BEC), Anthony Walcott, as he spoke to the media yesterday, while highlighting that some areas of the Act were hindering businesses due to missing regulations, leading to a myriad of interpretations.

“One of the other issues that we are having with the operation of the Employment Rights Act relates to the involvement of legal counsel, in matters relating to discipline, which normally would be within the purview of the employer. We are finding several instances where an individual may be called up in a disciplinary matter and we find ourselves almost in a courtroom environment trying to deal with simple operational issues in our midst. These are things, we feel, that if they were properly addressed in the regulations to the Act, which governs and sets out how the parties behave and get into the functions of the Act, would certainly make life a lot easier,” he said.

“We have things inside the Act that say that during the hearing the employee is entitled to bring a representative or friend and that section has been so grossly misinterpreted where we get lots of people turning up with attorneys as friends,” Walcott continued.

Saying that the BEC had sent Government some 14 pages of recommended changes, he pleaded with the administration to consider these as top priority.

Adding her voice to the matter, the Confederation’s President Marguerite Estwick said small businesses especially were being affected, saying a legal procedural element was now being brought into the workplace.

“It may not make it very difficult for large employers, but it makes it very difficult for small employers, who may not have dedicated human resource departments, highly trained human resource professionals to lead a process that has become very legalistic. In terms of how the procedures are set out, it makes our environment very difficult and you look at it as we position ourselves to compete for investment dollars,” she stated. (JMB)