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BEL And Union Argue Over Gas Turbine Employees
posted (April 27, 2012)
On last night's news you saw 30 of BEL's employees skip their lunch hour to take it to the picket line. The flashpoint that pushed them to picket is the a dispute over three employees who were dismissed.

But they have plenty of other issues - many of them dating back to the time when Fortis was controlling the company. One of those issues, though, stems from this management's decision to eliminate the staff at the Gas Turbine. BEL says it's too costly to keep them around all year when they only work a few days year, while the Union says they are essential to the company's smooth operation.

Here are both sides of that argument:..

Dorla Staine - General Secretary - BEWU
"I want to add that besides the guys going, one of the key points for us being here also is for 4 brothers at the gas turbine plant who the management have decided, that within one year, their posts will be redundant. For the Union, this is a very major concern not only for them as employees, but the general public as well. The gas turbine is the back start engine. In case of emergency, that the engine they look at to get up the system quickly. How could management even think of a decision like that? Which management with responsibility would do that? We asked them - we were in a meeting Friday gone - are you shutting down the gas turbine? The said that they wouldn't. Then, how can they ask about terminating the guys? Who will run the machines when they go? They said that the machine will be manned from this center here. We have about 2 of the operators here. They can tell you. That is not happening up until this point. From in the 1990's that plan was supposed run remotely, and it is not happening. So, I don't know if people are taking the operations of this company seriously. And that's why the union is out here today."

Dawn Sampson - Corporate Secretary, BEL
"When you look at the gas turbine operations over the past year, in total, it has only operated for 3 days out of 365 days for the year. So clearly, looking at that, it's not economically sensible for the company to be paying 100's of thousands of dollars to run this operation especially when the facility can be operated remotely. So the management the company has made a decision to do just that - to start with the remote operations. However, at the same time, we do have to be sensitive to the employment needs of our employees, so we have offered them options including training. We've given them the opportunity indeed to say on for a period of time, and it is likely that during that period of time, another opportunity - a more permanent opportunity - would come up within the company. The nature of our operations here - especially if you are trained - is what we are focusing on, training them for other positions in the company."

The union today issued a three thousand word press release - accusing management, among many other things, of dictatorial high-handed behavior.

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