Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Staff at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in St Ann’s have been tem­porar­i­ly laid off with no pay ef­fec­tive April 1 as the clo­sure of bor­ders in light of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has hit the ho­tel in­dus­try.

A let­ter dat­ed March 25 signed by Stacey Ann Sylvester, di­rec­tor of Hu­man Re­sources, stat­ed that the ho­tel was al­ready op­er­at­ing on a skele­tal staff and that staff was giv­en the op­tion to pro­ceed on va­ca­tion leave to en­sure that they re­ceive their March salaries.

“As the pub­lic health cri­sis con­tin­ues to evolve, we have been faced with a time of un­cer­tain­ty for the coun­try as well as the ho­tel. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the oc­cu­pan­cy is at three per cent and con­tin­ues to de­crease as de­ci­sions are tak­en to com­bat the spread if the virus ex­am­ple, clo­sure of bor­ders, lim­i­ta­tions on so­cial events etc,” the let­ter stat­ed.

“At this point in time, it has be­come nec­es­sary for the ho­tel to es­ca­late its con­tin­gency plan and take more dras­tic mea­sures, in or­der to se­cure ex­ist­ing jobs and safe­guard the fi­nan­cial health of the busi­ness,” it added.

It went on to state that the ho­tel can no longer sus­tain the pay­ment of full salaries and wages to all team mem­bers, “There­fore, with ef­fect from April 1, all team mem­bers will be tem­porar­i­ly laid off (with no pay) till April 30.”

Staff was then giv­en an op­tion to choose three op­tions met­ed out to them by man­age­ment, one of which in­volved work­ing one week per month and be­ing pre­pared to per­form oth­er du­ties than what’s in their job de­scrip­tions.

The op­tions stat­ed in the let­ter were:

“1. Con­tin­ue your va­ca­tion leave and utilise your en­tire en­ti­tle­ment for 2020. If said leave ex­pires pri­or to April 30 and you do not wish to re­turn to work, the tem­po­rary-lay off will take ef­fect at that point with no pay.

2. Utilise the re­main­der of your va­ca­tion and then agree to a re­duc­tion in your salary by 75 per cent. If this op­tion is cho­sen, you will be re­quired to work one week (or it’s equiv­a­lent) per month and may be re­quired to per­form du­ties that are not in your cur­rent de­scrip­tion.

3. Cease any va­ca­tion/No Pay Leave and agree to a re­duc­tion in your salary/work sched­ule by 75 per cent from April 1 to April 30. If this op­tion is cho­sen, you will be re­quired to work one week (or it’s equiv­a­lent) per month and may be re­quired to per­form du­ties that are not in your cur­rent job de­scrip­tion.”

Staff mem­bers were giv­en by to­day (March 30) to se­lect an op­tion. If none was se­lect­ed, em­ploy­ees will be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly tem­porar­i­ly laid off from April 1.

Staff mem­bers were al­so as­sured that it would be busi­ness as usu­al once busi­ness re­bounds and oc­cu­pan­cy rates dras­ti­cal­ly im­prove.

A work­er, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied said they are wor­ried as there’s no mon­ey flow for them.

“Some of us are sin­gle par­ents, we have to put food on our ta­bles. Yea, the gov­ern­ment asked for rent and loans to be de­ferred but how are some of us go­ing to get mon­ey to buy food be­cause some of us live pay cheque by pay cheque. It’s hard.”

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) con­demned what it called the “cal­lous, in­sen­si­tive and in­hu­mane de­ci­sion of the man­age­ment to lay off all em­ploy­ees of the ho­tel, with­out pay for one month.”

The union called it “a cow­ard­ly and back­ward de­ci­sion.”

NATUC called on the Gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene in the mat­ter im­me­di­ate­ly and to al­so re­view the con­tracts of em­ploy­ment of the se­nior man­age­ment team re­spon­si­ble for “tak­ing such a back­ward de­ci­sion.”