Labour Leader Says ILO 87 Would Cause Mass Chaos:
By Vanessa C. Rolle -
Nassau, Bahamas:

A recent call by Trade Union Congress President Obie Ferguson for the government to bring the International Labour Organization’s Convention 87 into effect has been knocked down by a veteran trade unionist.

Secretary General of the Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union Leo Douglas told The Bahama Journal on Thursday that when labour leaders meet with the new Minister of Labour Dion Foulkes next week, this is one issue that will definitely come up.

Under ILO Convention 87, workers would be able to join the union of their choice as opposed to the union of their trade.

Mr. Douglas said this is not a case where the grass is greener on the other side. The Bahamas is not an industrialized country and is dependent mainly on the tourism and banking industries, he reminded.

"It will cause a lot of confusion," he said, suggesting that it would not make any sense for the hotel union, as an example, to represent a construction worker.

"That doesn’t make sense. You can cause the biggest chaos in this country with that sort of thing."

He said members who just pick up and join another union after making contributions for so many years would forfeit all of their benefits entrenched in their prior membership agreements.

Mr. Douglas said The Bahamas does not have the demographics for Convention 87 to work.

"The country is too small. [Our major industry is tourism]; we don’t have anything else hardly. So that will not be the best thing and I think many of the unions are going on record to say that and when we meet with the minister we are going to make that clear," he said.

"We’ve had sessions with the former government. We have had it with the current administration when they were in before and we told them that they have to be very careful with that, talking about Convention 87 because it is not really good for the country."

Mr. Ferguson, however, has for years been pushing for ILO Convention 87 to become law in The Bahamas, and had blasted the former government for not making it a reality.

In Manifesto ’07, there is no mention of Convention 87, although the FNM has pledged to strengthen and improve labour administration in The Bahamas.

18 May 2007