Thousands will head to the polls today to take part in The Bahamas Public Services Union (BPSU) elections and hopeful, Alexander Burrows and incumbent BPSU President John Pinder squared off on Love 97’s Issues of the Day radio talk show on Thursday in their efforts to rally up support from voters.

During the show, Mr. Pinder was accused of being responsible for the decline in BPSU’s membership and was slammed for his “poor leadership” style and representation of members.

Mr. Burrows reminded voters that they now have an opportunity to make a change.

“If members are happy with what they have, they can do what they did in the last election to return John Pinder back to the helm of this organisation, if they don’t like the kind of representation they received, they can vote for me under my leadership and there will be a difference in leadership style, leadership representation and care for our members,” he said.

Mr. Pinder refuted those claims and said his track record is proof of his accomplishments.

He said that the BPSU has had a decline in membership way before his time.

“The BPSU has been declining since 1970, every time a government form an authority the constitution gave persons the right to form a union so it’s no surprise to me that persons will try to form their own unions to move away from the BPSU,” he said.

“The thing is we have to continue to build our organisation, to make the benefits so good that people will not want to leave our organisation.”

Moving forward Mr. Pinder said that he is focused on building the lives of members even more as he is looking for the government to assist in creating a pension fund for members.

“One of the things we’re going to do this time, we’re going to get the government to agree to a establishing a pension trust fund where they don’t necessarily have to out the physical cash into it but a pension bank so that every member will knows their value, if they’re burrowing assets it also can help them as it relates to if they’re terminated they’ll be compensated for their good years and if they die their family will be able to get a year’s salary and a death benefit and a pension that they have already built up.”

Cabinet recently approved an Industrial Agreement between the Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) and the BPSU valued at nearly $10 million.

The new five year Industrial Agreement takes effect from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2018 and entails a significant increase across the board for all members of the Bargaining Unit of the BPSU, and introduces first time remuneration for Emergency Medical Personnel (EMS).

This Industrial Agreement comes two months after the PHA executed a five year agreement with the Bahamas Doctors Union at a cost of $2.9 million.

More than 3,000 voters are expected to take part in today’s elections.