Bahamian employers remain “furious” about the nature and timing of the proposed Employment Act changes, one well-known businessman saying the reforms would introduce “outrageous inflexibility” and turn this nation into another France.
Calling on the Christie administration to “back off”, Dionisio D’Aguilar, Superwash’s president, said the mandatory one-hour lunch break proposal alone meant that Bahamas-based companies were being faced with a minimum 12.5 per cent increase in payroll costs.
Pointing out that this increase rose to near 20 per cent for companies using shift workers, Mr D’Aguilar, himself a former Chamber of Commerce president, told Tribune Business: “The pendulum is swinging too far to the wrong side.”
Suggesting that the proposed Act changes failed to account for reality, both in terms of the weak macroeconomic environment and the already-high operating costs faced by Bahamian businesses, Mr D’Aguilar said most politicians were blissfully unaware of this.
Pointing out that many politicians had “never run a business in their life”, the Superwash president said the constant imposition of new rules and regulations on the private sector sometimes caused him to wonder whether they “hate the business community”.
