Employees discontent with new terms of employment and salaries with Bowen

Christelle Wilson
Wilson says that the restructuring of the company was necessary to provide quality service to customers.
Christelle Wilson, Internal Legal Counsel & PR Officer, Bowen & Bowen
“We have been working for a while now on a restructuring program for our presale off-the-products at Bowen and Bowen. We have customers that need to get our products, get it quickly so that they can resell to their consumers. So what the team did, we got together several years ago and we decided how can we be a better-efficient company and serve our customer base. The solution was that we have presale salesmen go out, take the orders from our customers and then we have the delivery men and their assistants who would go out and deliver these products and everything will be done in a timely manner, efficiently and everybody will be satisfied. So what happened was that, as I mentioned, two years ago, this was thrown around at our employees. We started to train with our deliverymen, with their assistants; with everybody who would play a key role in this presale movement and we have been in discussion with these employees in question and employees on a whole. About two months now we’ve been training them and everything seemed to be going smoothly as far as Bowen and Bowen is concerned and we did conduct some employee evaluation to determine who will be our presales men, who will be our deliverymen, who will be assistants.”
Duane Moody
“There must be setbacks caused by the actions of these men. Could you tell us about that? Is there any financial implication to this? Human resources, things like that?”
Christelle Wilson
“I’m glad you asked that Duane because we did incur a great loss due to the fact that these gentlemen did not come to work. Remember this is a new system where we have our presales men go out and then our deliverymen and assistants take out the goods. So what we had had to happen yesterday was that men who should have been out pre-selling the goods had to then turn around and had to deliver. So we lost a day of getting sales. We also did not get to finish all the deliveries we had because we had new guys, who are not familiar with the routes, trying to get our goods to our customers because at the end of the day, we still have our customers to satisfy.”
Wilson told News Five that all benefits as prescribed by the law will be paid to the terminated employees.
13 Bowen & Bowen employees terminated
Thirteen employees of Bowen and Bowen Limited have been terminated. That decision was taken by the management of the company after the group of employees comprising of drivers and their assistant stayed off work for two days to signal their discontent with new terms of employment and salaries with the company. The group claimed that their eligibility for holiday pay, commission and benefits would change so they refused to sign the new contract. Well late this evening, the company decided to send them home. But before that decision, News Five had a one-on-one with Bowen’s Internal Legal Counsel and PR Officer, Christelle Wilson. Wilson says the new terms of employment would have benefited Belize City employees as it has in San Pedro and Caye Caulker. Wilson says they were taken aback because the employees did not address their grievances with the company before abandoning their posts.
Christelle Wilson, Internal Legal Counsel & PR Officer, Bowen & Bowen
“We have a couple employees who we have learnt through the media—because they have not up to date come to put forward any complaint to Bowen and Bowen—who are saying that they are unhappy with the change in our restructuring and they are unhappy with the changes in their wages. Let me explain the changes in wages and maybe you can try to help me because for the life of me, I am still trying to understand. We had our delivery men who use to be earning a flat basic salary and they will be making overtime. Under this new structure, we now want to give these employees a feeling of empowerment. We want to incentivize them to go out there and ensure that after the presales men have gone out and they have garnered the sales that they complete the sales by delivering the goods. So we changed their status quo; we made them supervisors. To supervise their team and make sure that everybody is on board and working together. So what we have now is the deliveryman becoming a supervisor; he won’t be making overtime anymore because as you know that’s basic knowledge….when you become a supervisor, you no longer make OT; you get your basic flat salary. But we here at Bowen and Bowen Limited took into consideration that they use to make OT. We added that to their basic salary and we gave them a twenty-seven percent increase in what their salary would have been. You get that every month. We still allowed them to make commission as a way to encourage them to go out and complete the sales. So now they have an opportunity to take home even more money than they use to do before this program came into effect.”
Duane Moody
“Is it possible that these persons were not sensitized enough to understand what the change would have entailed and the benefits they would have gotten from this change? Is it possible that they just neva understand what unu mi di do?”
Christelle Wilson
“Duane that is a valid question and I must say that after the way they have been behaving in the media, you would want to think soh nuh chu? But no, that is not the case. We have been undergoing training with these guys for months and months. We have been telling them this is how we approach customers, this is what you’re going to do; this team is going to go out on presale. And even though we are hearing about the disgruntlement now, none of them have really voiced any strong opinions that they were not onboard; that they would not want to be on this new regiment; that they would not want to work at Bowen and Bowen anymore…none of this came out. So we were very amazed and shock to hear yesterday that they are acting as though this is the first time they are hearing about this new pre-selling arrangement that we are going to have here at Bowen and Bowen.”
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