RYAN BA­CHOO

The Man­age­ment of Ice Caribbean En­ter­tain­ment Dis­trict (ICED) has moved to clar­i­fy a re­port shared on so­cial me­dia re­gard­ing its fur­lough of em­ploy­ees.

A me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day stat­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion com­mu­ni­cat­ed with staff mem­bers on Thurs­day (April 27), in­di­cat­ing a new struc­ture for the ICED Skat­ing Fa­cil­i­ty and Snow Play­ground. 

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, it was due to a change in op­er­at­ing hours from Wednes­day to Sun­day from 1 pm to 9 pm, which would utilise one shift in­stead of two shifts.

The re­lease from ICED ex­plained:

"As such, the com­pa­ny made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly fur­lough staff for a pe­ri­od of three months as a re­sult of the new struc­ture. Dur­ing this meet­ing, em­ploy­ees were told to keep their uni­forms as there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing called out to work in the near fu­ture. Fur­loughed staff are free to en­ter the fa­cil­i­ty as guests but not as uni­formed em­ploy­ees."

ICED says fol­low­ing the three-month pe­ri­od, the com­pa­ny will re­view the struc­ture and no­ti­fy staff re­gard­ing their em­ploy­ment sta­tus.

With re­gards to em­ploy­ee uni­forms, the com­pa­ny, via its em­ploy­ee con­tract, agreed to pay 50% for the cost of the uni­forms while staff mem­bers who signed the con­tract agreed to cov­er the cost of the uni­form pay­ing the re­main­ing 50% which ac­counts for the pay­ment of TT$1,200. Via the em­ploy­ee con­tract, it was agreed by both par­ties that the TT$1,200 would be de­duct­ed over a 6-month pe­ri­od (TT$200 per month).

ICED al­so con­firmed that all salaries will be paid via cheques on Mon­day 1st May 2023, not­ing this would be “a one-time oc­cur­rence” and that go­ing for­ward, it would “utilise ACH trans­fer”.