Human Resources: A Review of Bermuda Employment Act of 2000
A Review of Bermuda Employment Act of 2000
What about it?
The labor sector on the island of Bermuda have triumph when after long years of legislative process they have finally established a strong employment law that the main objective is to impose justice for all employees in the state. The Bermuda Employment Act of 2000 ascended as a law on December 8th, 2000 which targeted the 1st of March, 2001 for implementation. The focus of the law mainly to provide Bermudian employees a clear statement of their employment, leaves and termination. One of the highlights of this law is the imposition of the standard minimum wage. The fact that Bermuda have imposed a minimum wage it solidifies the foundation of their workforce in terms of sustainable income. It also sets the benchmark for the state to determine their economic situation based on the minimum earner's purchasing power. Therefore, enabling them to determine a more accurate economic decision based on how the price of goods affect the average earner's purchasing capability.
There's a lot of advantage to talk about in the Bermuda employment law, one of them is to promote accountability on the part of the employers. This is because the employment Act requires them to provide their employees with a sort of contract or otherwise employment statement. The statement is a form of security blanket for the employees because it states their job title, commencement date of employment, an itemized pay breakdown, agreed work hours, overtime rates and most importantly the itemized benefits. Having an employment statement secures the employee's the certainty of tenure and provisional rights including entitlements. However, there is quite a single disadvantage in this area of the law, particularly in section six of the Act. Despite the enumeration of the benefits ranging from various leaves and pension provisions, it did not mentioned anything about medical benefits. In other countries medical benefits are as significant as social security because employees doesn't just have to be secured of their retirement, but also of their work safety and well-being.
Accidents happen in the workplace, injuries, work-related illnesses or even unrelated case of health issues has to be taken into consideration because health issues affect employee's productivity performance. On the lighter side, the security of tenure in the Bermuda Employment Act is well defined. Termination of employment is a very sensitive issue when it comes to labor talks. It does not only determine the employment status of the employees, but also their constitutional right to defend their themselves from unjustified termination. The Act clearly stipulate all the conditions of employment terms. Whether an employee is under a probationary period or on a regular status, the Act defines their limitations including notice periods, applicable pay and termination process. However, under section 24 of the Act where grounds for disciplinary actions are stated, it didn't clearly elaborated the terminologies of the due process when it comes to employee misconduct.
Paragraph one of section 24 only mentioned giving the employers the authority to perform disciplinary actions to any cases that the employee committed an offense, but it did not elaborate a standard operating procedure when it comes to serving disciplinary measures to the employees. Like for example, the Act only say that the employer can serve warning notices or suspension. However, it didn't mention the succession of how disciplinary actions should be served and the right of the employee to undergo a hearing. Normally, when an employee committed an offense against the company an investigation and hearing is being conducted. Although repeated misconduct and unsatisfactory performance was emphasized in the Act, the process on how they should be initiated is unclear. This could be a threat to the employees because there could be some employers that will take the opportunity to manipulate the process, in order for them to unreasonably terminate an employee.
