#Providenciales, August 10, 2019 – Turks and Caicos – Eighteen firefighters from the Providenciales International Airport were on Friday able to have a one-hour meeting with the Governor, Premier and the Turks and Caicos Islands Airports Authority, TCIAA which brought an amicable end to a 26-hour strike.
Twenty of the airport fire crew walked off the job
on Thursday around 1:30 pm demanding better hours, fair compensation and an
improved work site.
“We came to an agreement and everything is sorted
out.”
Earlier in the day, the same firefighter was far less
contented with his role at the fire station at the aerodrome. He
explained to Magnetic Media that the hours were exhaustingly long, which
inhibited his alertness at work. The young man said the conditions at the
fire station were deplorable. Broken toilet, broken faucet, broken air
conditioning, broken stove and broken microwave for men and women who sometimes
spent well over 12-hours on the job at the country’s busiest airline gateway.
There was also a problem with payment and
calculation of overtime.
A meeting was held at 2 pm on Friday, we are told
at the Employment Services office on Airport Road and included the Premier,
Sharlene Robinson; who is also the minister responsible for airports and
Governor, Nigel Dakin.
Conroy Smith, deputy chairman of the TCIAA board of
directors represented the Authority.
It was said that following the session, shifts are
back to normal, there was agreement for the firefighters to be paid overtime
and yesterday; Friday August 9, 2019 the team of 23 men and two women were due
to receive a proper stove, working microwave and the second bathroom is to be
fixed.
The problem, said the firefighter speaking to
Magnetic Media on the assurance of anonymity was “a lack of communication; they
didn’t even know what we were dealing with.”
On the day news of the strike reached Magnetic
Media, we tried to get a comment from the Turks and Caicos Islands Airports
Authority, TCIAA. A reply did come from its CEO, John Smith; in an email
he said: “The airport is functioning.”
However, our news organization was given a report
contrary to Mr. Smith’s assessment of the situation at the Providenciales
International Airport, PLS.
Magnetic Media was informed that some 20 fire
fighters decided take strike action and left the airport on Thursday. A
skeleton crew remained, but it is said that team which stayed on duty was
insufficient to take on the titan-sized British Airways flight. Yet
British Airways landed and left the PLS, thankfully without incident, but
allegedly without the proper number of fire fighters on the ground.
More than 24-hours after an industrial dispute was
activated with a ‘walk out’ by the firefighters, there continued to be no
official comment on the matter from the managers of the airport, the TCIAA.
The better news is that the issue, is resolved and
immediately following the meeting with the Premier and the Governor,
firefighters returned to work to be joined by others.
Yesterday, flights at the Providenciales
International Airport recorded hour-long delays and some flights were
reportedly cancelled.
Fortunately, news of a return to ‘normal’ was
on-time for the private airports like Provo Air Center, which confirmed that
arrivals were almost but ultimately not interrupted by the industrial dispute.
The firefighter speaking to Magnetic Media said the workers were very pleased with the outcome, proud that they stood up for better conditions on the job and were grateful to secure an audience with not one, but two country leaders.
#magneticmedianews
#firefightersbacktowork