By Vernon Daley, Staff ReporterHUNDREDS OF workers at the financially troubled Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) are likely to be sent home tomorrow.
The impending lay-offs, which could affect some 300 workers, have emerged against the background of severe inefficiencies in the company resulting in millions of dollars in losses each day.
This has left the four-year-old transport company struggling to make ends meet, jeopardising a relatively decent bus service, which had replaced the chaotic system that had existed in the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region up to then.
In fact, so massive were the losses that JUTC president, Sterling Soares, last July summoned a team of Swedish consultants to look at the inefficiencies and weaknesses in the company and make recommendations for improving its operations.
One of its recommendations is a 90 per cent hike in bus fares. If accepted, fares could be increased to nearly $40 per stage, up from the current $20.
The consultants have also recommended that priority be given to the cashless fare collection system (since been introduced) to stem leakage and encourage frequent travellers. At the same time, the consultants have submitted a raft of cost-cutting measures designed to save the state-owned bus company $700 million over the next 15 months.
Included among these is a recommendation to lay off hundreds of drivers, conductors and other categories of workers.
This has pushed the company onto a collision course with the University and Allied Workers Union (UAWU) and the Union of Clerical Administrative and Supervisory Employees (UCASE), which represent JUTC workers.
The UAWU, which represents about 80 per cent of the more than 3,000 unionised workers, is currently having a series of meetings with the management to finalise the list of employees to be sent home.
President of the UAWU, Professor Trevor Munroe, told The Gleaner yesterday that worker representatives at the various bus depots are currently having meetings with employees to make a determination as to who will be on the list.
Barring any unforeseen problems, the final decision is expected to be made tomorrow.
Professor Munroe said, however, that the union would be insisting that the company makes workers redundant immediately, if they have no plans of re-employing them.
"That's the main thing we are insisting on," he told The Gleaner.
Vice-president of UCASE, Danny Roberts, has echoed this sentiment. According to him, the union would be pressing the management to make a clear determination as to which employees are to be made redundant and which are to be laid off.
Under the law, workers can only be laid off for a maximum of 120 days, after which their employers are obliged to make redundancy payments.
Mr. Roberts said he would be seeking to negotiate a special redundancy package for those employees who will be sent home permanently. He said the union will be asking for three weeks' pay for each year an employee has spent at the company, as opposed to the two weeks provided for in the law.
"All the employees on the list to be made redundant should receive up front their special redundancy payments and should have the first right of refusal in the event the company is seeking further employment," he said this week.
But even while the company is mired in difficulties, the management has remained silent. Questions posed by The Gleaner to Mr. Soares and Transport and Works Minister, Robert Pickersgill, have gone unanswered.
The JUTC currently has daily losses of about $3.6 million while the negative worth of the company in February 2002 stood at $1.13 billion. This was in addition to an accumulated deficit of $2.63 billion to February 2002 total revenue that would be collected over 19 months.
