Just weeks before the Christmas holidays more than twenty people have been laid off from Greython Construction on the island of Grand Bahama.  The company is currently working on the Celebration Key project.

According to Minister of Labour and Public Service, the Hon. Pia Glover-Rolle the government was not notified of the layoffs.  She said,  “the Department of Labour in Grand Bahama were visited by some employees that were laid off by a company by the name of Greython today.  As a result our inspectors reached out to the organization who informed that they did temporarily layoff some workers as a result of lost work or a lost contract but they did not intend for the layoff and they do not intend for the layoff to be long term but at this time they had to temporarily layoff employees.”

Layoffs also occurred at Buckeye, which the Department was aware about.  The Minister said, “they reported within the statutory requirements.  Those employees will seek to be engaged through the Department of Labour if you are able to assist them as we usually do with displaced employees.  But I don’t know anything about a massive layoff but I do know that four persons were to be made redundant with the statutory benefits applied to their redundancy packages and the Bahamas Department of Labour, in the wings, to ensure that any displacement where possible for us to place in new employment we continue of offer that service through our Public Employment Services Unit.”

Responding to requests for comment from ZNS News on the matter, Greython Construction said no layoffs had taken place.  They met with the Department of Labour and sought to formalize agreements with their employees with the signing of contracts.  Some employees chose not to sign a contract.