City Meat Workers Express Fears

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Hon. Fred Mitchell

FRED MITCHELL MP FOX HILL
24TH AUGUST 2010
ON THE FATE OF LABOUR AT CITY MARKETS

I have a concern for my constituents who work at City Markets who are extremely worried that this company has such financial issues that it may not survive.

They have seen the inventory in the store declining. There are issues with suppliers. They have seen managers collecting U.S. dollars from the stores. Equipment breaks and is not repaired.  Something as commonplace as sliced deli meats is not available in most of the stores.

I have toured all the stores in Freeport where I am today and in Nassau and the fears expressed by employees are the same. They fear that having regard to what happened with Clico, the government and the Ministry of Labour in particular need to intervene to protect the interests of the 700 workers of this company.

I agree with them that the Government needs to be proactive and seek to protect the interests of the 700 workers at the company.

The Bahamas cannot afford a failure that would leave 700 workers out of jobs and without proper protection.

I hereby call on the Ministry of Labour to so intervene.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

13 COMMENTS

  1. Yeah CM PC I wouldnt go back in there if you paid me, smells like the back of a garbage truck. Nasty. Another thing about CM CB, i had some macaroni cheese from the deli one time and it was god awful .. dont know what kind of grease or whatever they used to cook that but I almost vomitted and threw the rest out.

  2. Has anyone been to the City Market at Seagrapes mall on Prince Charles Drive? I don’t know about sinking, but that store is certainly stinking. The smell is disgraceful.
    I agree with previous comments. Poor staff and disgraceful prices are to blame.

  3. Cable beach was a real good store before they send home our real boss now they make us cook green meat and bad cabbage to sell for lunches nothin works here anymore the place is filthy with no goods on the shelfs we all sick an tired of winford

  4. Even the CB store sucks really, though cleaner than others. It still has stale meats and missing much other produce that SV has. I bought some sliced meat from there one time and got home and it was bad. I imagine their fridges and freezers probably dont work good just like the other stores, newer or not.

  5. what about those workers at Atlantis? those at Crystal Palace and the many other hotels, now crystal palace close again and Baha mar just got all that money, Where is the Min of Labor and were is the A-Team who said they would strike first before our hotel close again.Thank you Mr Mitchell for trying to help those workers !!!!

  6. Other than the Cable Beach store, all of City Market Stores, sucks, even the Lyford Cay store is in a horid state. I seriously doubt they will be around in 2012,or even sooner.

  7. Well if they had done a better job then perhaps their food stores would be worth buying from. Dont give me that stuff that its the owners fault, the staff there are the problem, they are in most cases just plain nasty, the places are not kept up, dirty, the kids that work packing seem to go around opening up things and eating from them leaving them half opened on the shelves, the cashers spray deadly chemicals all over the counters where the food is placed for checkout, or its full of slime from chicken and other salmonella infested food. They rarely have fridges or freezers that work, most of their foods are defrosted, Ive lost tons of money from buying produce from there, so I just stopped. Dont get me started on the other stores .. this company is just one of the culprits. But I totally blame the staff, especially the managers for not doing their job properly, how about a walk about the store once in a while?? And a good cleaning of the floor in the warehouse would not hurt either. And some of the staff are just plain rude, i recall one lady at the deli trying to give me 2 small pieces of brocolli for whatever it cost for a serving I think it was like $2.00. Told her no thanks .. and she never smiled anyway, hardly any of their staff do, but then that is the whole Bahamas not just them.

  8. It is obvious that City Meat Markets is sinking!It would be a shame that another 700 Bahamians would be out of work.
    I have friends who have worked for City Meat Markets for 30+years both in the stores and also in the accounts department at the Head office and from what I was told,City Meat Markets is sinking and sinking FAST!!. I was told by one staff member at the stores that The CEO Mr Winford sends persons to stores to collect U.S. dollars, sometimes up to 40,000 per day. I get the impression that most of the money made by City Markets is being taken out of the stores in US dollars. One store clerk told me personally that they can’t make US Dollars quick enough because as soon as they make it someone for the head office is sent to pick it up.
    A couple months ago,City Meat Markets got rid of Bahamian Born CFO, Mrs Vangry Rahming and brought in their own CFO from Trinidad, They then fired Mr Peter Goudie the Human Resources Director and replaced him with American Born Mrs Connie Rolle.
    It is also said that City Meat Market has set up a programme that most of the products they now distribute comes out of Trinidad that way most of the money the company make would be sent back to Trinidad for payments Do the Math… A Company in the Bahamas x a Foreign CEO. x a Foreign CFO.X ALL products from Trinidad.

    • = this is the reason they sent Mr. D. Butler home. He did what he could to stop this happen. Where are these dollars going NOT TO THE BANK OR THE LOCAL SUPPLIERS

      • Mr Butler was not sent home because he was trying to help the company, he was just as bad as the rest.His only concern was to see that money falls back into his family company weather it was done over or under the table. Mr. Butler was lazy, he did no work through out the day all of his work he pass on to others and took the credit.I think that is why Franklyn is running the family business and not him(BIG BABY)

    • True on the facts about the nationalities of the Executives mentioned.

      FACTS –Although Ms. Rolle may be American born she has Bahamian parents and a Bahamian husband. She has worked for Bahamas Supermarkets for 24 years in the Human Resources Department.
      Mr. Goudie is Canadian born and is married to a Bahamian for more than 35 years. He is currently an HR Consultant.

      CEO Derek Winford got rid of the former executive team either by instruction from Trinidad or because he couldn’t handle what the “knowledgeable” team had to say. The reality is that foreign entities want “their men” in place to protect their investment. Staff say Winford’s days are numbered and he has failed as a CEO.

      As for the $40k in American money been taken out of the company…. don’t think the company took in that amount of cash because sales have declined.

      It’s such a sorry shame when you get foreign investment into a company and they don’t rely on the knowledge or expertise of the Bahamian people. The former CEO Sunil Chatrani, who hailed from BS&T in Barbados did so and the company was in a much better position. He quit because he was fed up with Neil Massy. Chatrani listened to his team, the vendors, the employees and showed them much more respect than Winford.

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