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Last Updated: Mar 30, 2017 - 12:43:53 PM |
 As the country commemorates yet another Labor Day, workers on Grand Bahama Island remain in dire straits. ALL IS NOT WELL HERE, but the struggle continues.
This coming Friday, workers from every sector of our economic landscape will march to celebrate the freedoms which men and women like the great Sir Randol Fawkes – for whom the holiday has been renamed – fought to preserve for Bahamian workers, unfortunately, under the watch of this administration, those freedoms continue to be eroded, and laborers across the archipelago continue to come under attack. As a result, struggling families, including the many single parent households headed by women, are unable to meet their basic needs.
Sir Randol Fawkes and other founding members of this country’s labor movement must be rolling in their graves as there are the countless injustices perpetrated against Bahamian laborers on a daily basis.
On Grand Bahama workers at the Memories Resort continue to slave for pennies on the dollar while entertainers who once made honest livings at the local night spots have been made an endangered species by foreign administrators who have been allowed to further oppress them. Elsewhere in the tourism industry, taxi drivers also suffer from a lack of opportunity and are unable to take home a fair day’s pay. As for the island’s industrial sector, scores of Bahamians continue to be hired by the Freeport Container Port as Casual workers and denied access to employee benefits as a result; and at the Grand Bahama Shipyard, Bahamian workers are outnumbered all together.
Coupled with the staggering rate of unemployment on Grand Bahama, the state of labor relations on Grand Bahama is a ticking time bomb with explosive consequences. As the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link; at present the chain which forms the country’s economic foundation is weakening and can only be made stronger when the Bahamian workers finally receive the respect they deserve.
As the country commemorates another Labor Day, let us reflect on the blueprint left behind by our forefathers. Let us remember the sacrifices they made for all our sakes and work collectively to end the injustices endured by workers on Grand Bahama and the wider Bahamas.
ALL IS NOT WELL, but the struggle continues. This Labor Day, Bahamian workers will march forward in UNITY and LOVE UNDER GOD!
The Democratic National Alliance
© Copyright 2015 by thebahamasweekly.com
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