Bahamas Public Service Union officials said yesterday that there will be no strike taken at The College of The Bahamas (COB) for the remainder of this year.

Non-faculty workers at COB that were expected to go on strike last Thursday will hold off until January if there is no resolution met regarding the increased pay and benefits they were promised some three years ago.

According to BPSU President John Pinder, going on strike right now would make no sense at all.

“From what I hear from the minister of education, the cabinet should agree on a figure for the workers and we should have that figure by sometime Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. After he gets that approval we will take it from there,” he said.

“They asked us to give them our cooperation and so we are going to do that. But the workers will remain on work to rule,” he added.

“Going on strike at the beginning of the year and right before the holidays makes no sense. Doing it at the beginning of the year is the best way to do it if we don’t get the outcome that we wish,” he said.

The non-faculty workers have been awaiting approval on an agreement signed back in 2009 that spoke to increased pay and benefits for the employees.

According to Mr. Pinder, the workers to this day have still not received anything from the agreement and on December 6 announced that they would apply for the strike vote.

But Mr. Pinder said that there is a process to follow when carrying that out .

“The first thing we had to do was file a grievance, where the employer refuses to conclude negotiations in good faith. Once that is done then we would apply for the strike vote. Once there is approval that the employee is acting in a timely manner, then we would go ahead with the strike vote,” he said.

But Mr. Pinder also said that if the issue is not resolved by the end of the year, while the employees may not have a Merry Christmas, the college would not have a happy New Year.