Government recognizes second teachers union, triggers legal action from BUT

Government recognizes second teachers union, triggers legal action from BUT
(FILE)

NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The government is recognizing a second association of teachers as a bargaining agent for educators, sparking legal action from the Bahamas Union of Teachers.

Minister of Labour Keith Bell wrote the BUT to indicate that the government will acknowledge a breakaway union, the Bahamas Educators Counsellors and Allied Workers Union, as a bargaining unit for its members.

In response, the BUT filed for legal action on the matter last month and is waiting for the trial to start.

BUT president Belinda Wilson declined to comment on Friday, citing the pending trial.

Asked about the matter, Bell said: “What has happened is the BUT will continue being the bargaining agent for New Providence. What has happened is there is a group of teachers from Grand Bahama, Berry islands and one or two of the smaller islands and those teachers wish to be represented by a separate and distinct union.

“They don’t feel like they are getting the kind of representation that they would want so what they have done is they have determined that they will withdraw from the BUT. 

Bell said at this point the new union is a small one with 100 to 200 members.

“The law allows that anybody has the right of freedom of association and freedom to join a union, that’s in the constitution,” he said.

“So they have determined that that is what they wish to do.”

“From all indications the BUT feels I have no authority to do that, not even I but that the other union doesn’t have the authority to be recognized when there is a bargaining agent in existence and for which some of them are members. The court will make this determination but if I as a Bahamian…I feel that if I join a union I have a right to leave and if I wish to join another union why should that be determined by somebody else.”

In January the head of the new union, Sandra Major, said the association was quickly growing.

The union has portrayed itself as taking a more constructive, cooperative approach to education, drawing in contrast with the more militant approach of BUT.

1 comments

Shouldn’t teachers have a choice as to who represents them. Is the BUT afraid that with competition teachers wouldn’t have to put up with the sheer incompetence of the organization. The BUT like all unions today are only interested in sustaining itself and not the intetest of the members.

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