Lime and Bwu Summary of Negotiations

LIME and BWU Summary of Negotiations

The matters surrounding the negotiations between a leading telecommunications company and its workers are summarized below:

In July 2012 the telecommunications giant Cable & Wireless, trading in Barbados as LIME, initiated discussions with regional trade unions explaining their intention to make changes to the business model, centred on the franchising of the retail arm of the business.

The needs and motivation of LIME were driven by the changing face of the telecoms business on the island with major competitor Digicel now entrenched and in addition, the impact of new players, Columbus Communications Inc. and CariCable Inc. Secondly, the extensive competition in the retail space of handsets and accessories, compounded by significant operational support costs, according to LIME, threatened the viability of that line of business. The company's representatives insisted that the new focus of the company needed to be grounded in service enhancement and technological advancements.

The workers' representative in Barbados, The Barbados Workers' Union (BWU) and LIME commenced negotiations, using their individual influence, in an effort to reach their individual goals. The intergroup process was stalled after LIME's negotiating team walked out of talks in early January 2013.

The BWU was driven by the need to secure the employment of the more than 10% of the company's workforce. In the event that that could not be achieved, a severance package comparable to those negotiated by them in the past with LIME was the only acceptable indemnification.

There was further push-back from Lime, as the Union attempted to add to the bargaining mix other outstanding but unrelated matters. The Union had long argued that at the core of LIME-BWU brittle industrial relations is the fact that, five Cable & Wireless companies were merged in 2002 when the telecommunications market was liberalised and jobs have not been reevaluated nor conditions of work regularised to date.

Both parties employed distributive bargaining tactics characterised by their respectively firm opening position, targets, and resistance points.

At a September 12, 2012 meeting with the Union, LIME advised of the plan to move to a managed service model for its retail outlets which would result in 97 employees' roles being made redundant. With this model, employees would own that line of the business; LIME offer included payment of 6 months wages while ex-employees learn the business.

Since this tally of 97, (48 workers from the retail shops, 19 back-office support staff, and 30 additional staff), represented more than 10% of the total staff complement, the Labour Department was engaged in the process.

Critically, the points of resistance and major contention between the two were over the severance arrangement that LIME, obligated by law, proposed to pay employees and what the BWU was willing to accept.

In response, on September 21, 2012 the BWU rejected the managed service offer as well as the LIME proposed severance package and expressed its expectation