“We won’t be bullied by unions – Minister insist blackout threats won’t be tolerated” – The Tribune

Excerpt from this article; “WORKS Minister Desmond Bannister yesterday said that neither the government, nor the public, would tolerate blackout threats from unions at Bahamas Power and Light as the company plans to offer voluntary separation packages to workers in a ‘rightsizing’ exercise.

‘Bahamians are not going to put up with any long, hot summer, and we’re not going to,’ Mr. Bannister said. ‘I don’t know where it came from but the Bahamian people will stand up for their right to have basic amenities in their life, one of those which is electricity.”

Unions representing workers at BPL had threatened it would be ‘a long hot summer’ as they fumed over planned job cuts.  On Friday, Bahamas Electrical Workers Union President Paul Maynard said lack of government intervention over the problem could see the Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis return from a trip to England to a country in darkness.”

First let me interject this for clarification and reference; “Domestic terrorism [definition];  – Commonly involves acts of violence or intimidation by citizens or permanent residents of a nations against the general public or property within that nation with the intention instilling fear in order to further political, social, or ideological objectives.”

There is a basic tenant when dealing with terrorist and this is not to negotiate with them and what the union has threatened is tantamount to domestic terrorism [see definition above] and should not be tolerated and treated as such,  so I agree with the statement of “We [the government] won’t be bullied by unions”, as the citizens that such threats would affect should not either, and  I ask this union did they really believe that it was a good idea/plan to threaten the entire country with a “long hot summer” in order to garner support from same said public? 

This position would be absurd, at the very least.

An act of “domestic terrorism” is basically what this union is threatening at this moment, it is wrong and probably illegal and the minister is quite right not to acquiesce to such nonsense because stripped down to its basic form it is just that – complete and utter nonsense.

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