The management of Fort Young Hotel has retrenched nearly 70 employees due to the biting effects of COVID-19. Other retained staffs on essential services have had their salaries reduced by 50% and some by 70% – while Chairman Gregor Nassief said he is also on zero salary at the moment.
“As the Chairman, my salary has been cut to zero,” Nassief said. “The rest of the management staff that remains have taken between a 50% to 70% pay cut and even those fully employed like the security, have taken a pay cut…we are all trying to sacrifice for each other.”
The laying off of workers at Fort Young Hotel is a testament to the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the tourism sector. Hotel operators and tour guides have been particularly affected since foreign tourists who usually visit Dominica have been held back in their home countries as a result global lockdown associated with the pandemic.
Closure of national borders has also not helped matters in any way since international traffic is seriously restricted in the Caribbean and everywhere else.
The Fort Young Hotel management said it was not easy for them to decide on laying off workers even though they had been operating on a skeletal workforce since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the Caribbean. Nassief said they only reluctantly agreed to lay off some workers after it was apparent that the government has economic stimulus package that could sustain them if they were out of work.
“Throughout all this time, we felt it best to ask you to be on non-pay leave as opposed to laying you off because in that way we could call you back once we felt that we could start back the operations,” Nassief explained.
The hotel chairman and director said his management team decided to retrench workers when it was obvious that the end to the coronavirus pandemic is not in sight. He said it was a difficult decision to implement but this is the only way the hotel can remain functional enough to re-employ workers when COVID-19 ends. He warned that the hotel is not shutting down operations in any way and is still open to bookings.
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