For the past few days, we've been hearing whisperings of a group of employees who work for Bowen & Bowen, and who have been unsatisfied with a change in their terms of employment.
The problem they're having is that the administrations wants them to sign on to new contracts that they say are unfair to them. It involves their eligibility for holiday pay, commission earned when they sell Coca Cola Products, and the benefits that they currently enjoy.
A group of these workers are saying that if they don't sign, their jobs are on the line. Well, it seems that a small group didn't go into work today, and they went to a labor union to see what protection they can get because they refuse to sign the new contract.
Today, a representative of that group call 7News out to speak with them off camera, and for fear of victimization, he asked us to help protect his identity. With that in mind, we bring you his comments, with the audio distorted to conceal his identity. Here's what he told us:
Voice of: Bowen & Bowen Employee
"All of these documents that they use, everything they just put it to us. How can they decided what they want to do, this is something that we all as employees - we push for the company, we try to make things run the way they want it to run but then we don't accept for them to come and make changes and then push a paper in front of us and say sign this because if we don't sign we will get fired."
Reporter
"Any consultation with you guys?"
Voice of: Bowen & Bowen Employee
"No kind of consultation to us stating that what they are changing and this is what is happening, what our opinions are or are we agree on this - nothing like that. Everything is just written down, signed and just present this in front of us with threats that if we don't sign the papers, we could get fired."
Reporter
"When is the deadline that you guys have to sign?"
Voice of: Bowen & Bowen Employee
"The deadline for signing is supposed to be today and we all just regroup and come to an agreement that we are not signing any papers right now. If I sell 250 cases for the day, I can look at $50 on top on my regular day pay. Now I have to deliver 744 cases, so I could receive that same $50 on top of my regular pay. So you have to work like 3 times harder than how we use to work to make that money. Then they look at us and they tell us that we are supervisors, if we are supervisors then we should be getting supervisors' allowances."
"We are not afraid of that. We are willing to stand up for our rights and we are willing to stand up and let others out there understand what is taking place at Bowen and Bowen because people look at it like a bunch of roses, but it's not. There many things that we are facing at Bowen and Bowen that people out there just look and say that we are working for a great company - people don't understand the issues that we have to deal with in this place. It's like they have us in a surrounding that we just can't say what we want on the compound because you have to be scared that somebody will take that in the office and like try to get rid of you or something."
Bowen and Bowen's public relations officer told us this evening that they are dumbfounded and disheartened at the claims of these employees. She told us that their prized employees were given an opportunity to become supervisors with compensation and she is appalled that they would take this step to abandon their costumers and defame the company that has provided for them. She says the company is undergoing restructuring and it offers employees promotions, and better commissions with no vacation changes. She says they have the choice to do their job or resign if they don't want to go along with the new restructuring. She says their grievances have not been communicated to the company - and she learnt of them through the media.
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