The Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) is ac­cus­ing the CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and the Gov­ern­ment of dis­guis­ing an em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ship to de­ny 11,500 work­ers their law­ful rights.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, BIG­WU said the mass dis­missal of work­ers on June 27, fol­low­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of 300 Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme con­trac­tors, was not mere­ly an ad­min­is­tra­tive de­ci­sion but a hu­man cri­sis. The union said CEPEP’s po­si­tion that the work­ers were em­ployed by con­trac­tors and not the com­pa­ny it­self was false and amount­ed to dis­guised em­ploy­ment.

BIG­WU ar­gued that CEPEP is the true em­ploy­er of the dis­missed work­ers, cit­ing di­rect su­per­vi­sion, per­for­mance as­sess­ment, work sched­ul­ing, timesheet re­views, and pay­ment au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

The union said the dis­missal stripped work­ers of ba­sic rights such as sick leave, va­ca­tion leave, tenure, recog­ni­tion of ser­vice, free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion, and the right to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. It added that the 11,500 work­ers were car­ry­ing out CEPEP’s core func­tion of pro­tect­ing, en­hanc­ing, and beau­ti­fy­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, which con­sti­tutes em­ploy­ment, not con­tract work.

BIG­WU has called on af­fect­ed work­ers to join the union as it pre­pares to trig­ger Sec­tion 2(4)(b) of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, seek­ing a court de­c­la­ra­tion that CEPEP is their em­ploy­er. The union said such a de­c­la­ra­tion would en­ti­tle the work­ers to re­in­state­ment, dam­ages for their dis­missal, and full com­pen­sa­tion for their years of ser­vice.

The union warned that it in­tends to pur­sue the mat­ter with every le­gal and in­dus­tri­al weapon avail­able, putting the CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and the Gov­ern­ment on no­tice that dis­guised em­ploy­ment is a fraud on the law.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has filed le­gal ac­tion on be­half of the 300 dis­missed con­trac­tors af­fect­ed by the ter­mi­na­tions.

On June 27, the Gov­ern­ment ter­mi­nat­ed around 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors, cit­ing the need for a full au­dit of the pro­gramme fol­low­ing al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and cor­rup­tion.

The con­trac­tors were in­formed they would re­ceive one month’s pay in lieu of no­tice.