Customs and Immigration officers joined nurses in walking off the job yesterday in what Trade Union Congress (TUC) President Obie Ferguson said was just the beginning of a massive nationwide strike, should workers' demands not be met.
This comes after months of the umbrella union threatening to take industrial action over a number of unresolved matters.
Ferguson noted that, in addition to the Bahamas Nurses Union and the Customs, Immigration and Allied Workers Union, strike votes have been taken by several hotel unions, while air traffic controllers are poised to take imminent action as well.
The unions claim that a host of issues are in dispute, including outstanding overtime and other pay, a lack of promotions and disputes over shift schedules.
With regard to the public servants involved, Ferguson accused the government of short-changing them on sick pay, vacation and holiday time and pension benefits - in some cases for several years.
"You cannot say, the public cannot say and the employers cannot say that the Trade Union Congress and its affiliates have not been reasonable," he said.
Minister of Labour Shane Gibson said no amount of agitation would get the government to make financially unfeasible commitments, and warned that the unions would not be allowed to shut the country down.
Director of Labour Robert Farquharson suggested the strike action may be illegal, but did not elaborate.
Unions should never take industrial action lightly - especially when it may inconvenience or disadvantage the public at large and even lead to real physical harm in the case of absent health workers. Strikes should always be a last resort.
If the situation develops into a large-scale and prolonged strike, Ferguson and his colleagues will have to present evidence of serious grievances to avoid public condemnation.
The government will point out that the country is strapped for cash at the moment, and claim it simply cannot afford to pay civil servants any more for the time being.
Be that as it may, Gibson and Farquharson, both former union leaders, must answer for how matters deteriorated to this drastic point. If anyone could have been in a position to reason with unions - or if justified, carry their message of discontent to Cabinet - it should have been these longtime labor men.
Did they fall down on the job? Are the unions just being unreasonable? Or is the strike action indicative of a more general rupture in the decades-long relationship between Bahamian workers and the Progressive Liberal Party?
After several mutually successful unified stands, tirelessly mythologized over the years, has so great a distance opened up between the aims and motives of labor and the priorities of the PLP leadership that they can no longer see eye to eye?
If this is indeed the case, the governing party would do well to remember that of the many promises made in the run-up to the 2012 election, several were to the unions and their members. There is nothing so wrathful as a faithful partner betrayed.

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