Dozens of employees of a Grand Bahama hotel property will be given the boot within the next few weeks.

Executives of the Grand Lucayan Reef Village last week met with the Commonwealth Union of Hotel Services and Allied Workers (CUHSAW) to announce their intention to terminate more than 50 employees of the Grand Lucayan Reef Village.

According to CUHSAW President Michelle Dorsette, the union was not privy to that meeting.

She did however reveal that the employees are from various departments including security, laundry and reservation.

“The union is saddened by this news on the part of the Grand Lucayan,” Ms. Dorsette said in an interview with the Bahama Journal. “These persons who will be terminated will be placed in dire situations as in most cases, these persons are the sole bread winner in their homes and are struggling to make ends meet, their lights are off and they are behind on their mortgages.

“This is very sad situation for these workers…in a democratic country, you should not treat people like this. You should not undermine individuals. These are hard working individuals.”

The union president added that strangely enough, her members were pleased to find out about the hotel’s plans as it proved what was being claimed all along – hotel executives are undermining union members.

The union is calling on the government to investigate the pending termination.

“We believe the hotel has some ulterior motives other than what they are saying to the union,” the union president said.

“They want to replace these workers with casual and part-time workers without job security or status…We cannot go with minimum wage pay with no benefits. The government needs to step in and see what is going on. This is a cancer. We cannot allow people to come in and see people as just numbers…Our inside information tells us that this is only the first in a phase of lay-offs the hotel is planning.”

When contacted, Labour Minister Shane Gibson said he was not advised of the pending terminations, “but will immediately check it out.”

However, Labour Director Robert Farquharson yesterday told the Bahama Journal that hotel executives have taken a business decision to outsource a number of departments including security and laundry.

“The outsourcing company has negotiated with the hotel to hire these people, so they will be doing the same jobs,” he said.

“The hotel will then have to pay redundancy pay based on the terms and conditions of the union’s industrial agreement.”

The union meantime plans to hold an emergency meeting on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. to further address the issue.

“We do not believe the hotel is being honest with us, so we intend to ready ourselves for battle,” Ms. Dorsette said in a release.