BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – While retail chain Courts plans to cut roughly 50 jobs across the Organization of the Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), local representatives have declared that the St. Kitts-Nevis branches would be unaffected by this move.
Over the last two weeks, Courts St. Lucia confirmed 15 redundancies. Meanwhile in Antigua, the company terminated six employees as the job cuts spread across the Courts OECS region.
SKNVibes contacted Lorraine Sidonie, OECS Courts Marketing Director, who informed that the management of Courts OECS has confirmed it would engage in a programme of “cost reduction initiatives”, which includes a number of staff redundancies.
“There are expected to be fewer than 55 in total across all Courts OECS businesses, as the intention is to keep the job losses to a minimum while still ensuring that the company's operating costs are aligned with current and anticipated levels of trade,” Sidonie said.
There had been growing concerns with the possibility of the job cuts spreading to St. Kitts-Nevis, but the Customer Service and Sales Operation Manager, Sharon Herbert, told SKNVibes that there is not a need for job cuts in the Federation due to the small size of the local staff.
“We are fully informed of the job cuts throughout the Courts OECS region, but between St. Kitts and Nevis there would be no job cuts.
“We are still keeping an open mind, however, as we don’t know if, or when the tables would be turned. We had already downsized our staff some time earlier, so there is not the need in our case currently,” Herbert informed.
Herbert further stated that the local Courts is trying to introduce activities and promotions to generate sales and maintain healthy business operations, especially facing the ongoing economic uncertainties.
