TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Towers employees frustrated after meeting

Re the last sentence .......‘the staff along with the reporter each reached out to Mr. Derby but he made no further comment” which is just as well because his comments are quite often based on anything but truth and honesty.

I have great sympathy for the Towers staff - they are an incredibly good group of people - and for sure, this could have been handled better. Many of these people worked at the original Mullet Bay Resort and transitioned to the Towers to work on the construction and up to the present fiasco. They truly deserved better than this regardless of what the situation was. Hmmmm. I wonder if Mr. Derby and other management staff are asked to live on $200.00 per month?

It's 200.00 bi weekly for 400.00 monthly which is still very low by any standards.

This I doubt will be uncommon, in this case you have 60 employees that work at a place that is shut down out of the owners control forced by government action. This story goes business to business all across the world, similar theme. Save lives one way, cause damage and death another. Trading lives. As a business owner I do my best to take care of my employees, and one way I do that is by staying in business and not going broke so there is still a place to work. Tough decisions have to be made, it does nobody any good if you don't remain in business.

Not to ask a stupid question, but since the Towers never reopened after Irma, were the workers getting paid their regular salary up to now, with no work? Or some of them were working? And is the owner of the Towers really going to be able to get money from the SXM government, after his actions post Irma??

Amazing they even can get 50% if not working from a company that’s closed. I wish I could sit at home not working and get paid. Not everyone can get unemployment money it doesn’t last forever. Many companies still are recovering from huge Irma losses after little or insufficient insurance payments. I’m surprised the sxm hotel association is not more vocal about the governments obvious lack of interest to get the island open again and people working. Obviously the right people aren’t suffering enough yet to get the airport open. Sad for sxm.

Maybe folks don’t need the tourists to return, I keep forgetting we are dealing with Netherlands/France.

With all due respect to the workers at the Towers; the resort has not been open since Irma, as I understand it, yet they have been paid full salary to come to work to do what??? I understand that employment laws here are a little wacky, by US standards and we should not be judgmental, but how long can a business that is not doing business continue to pay out money?

As to the airport opening, those of us living here are somewhat concerned about an onslaught of possibly-infected people descending upon the island. Until there are some sort of approved health checks prior to boarding planes, IMHO, air travel is risky. For sure, the merchants are hurting badly right now, and as Todd said, tough decisions have to be made.