Employers Face Insurance Non-Payment Charge
According to Deputy DPP head, Ms Cindy Clarke, for the first time in over ten, possibly fifteen years, Bermuda employers have been charged with failing to provide health insurance cover for their employees; and with taking payroll deductions from their employees, and then failing to apply those payroll deductions to providing health insurance.
Employer Mr Percy Caines was charged, as an employer, with failing to provide health insurance for himself and his employees and their dependents. This was alleged to have happened over a period of a year, between 12th June 2012 and 7th June 2013.
As an employer, Mr Caines was also charged with failing to properly inform employees of the non-existence of their health cover.
Entering his pleas to Senior Magistrate Archie Warner, Mr Caines pleaded not guilty on both counts.
He was followed by a second employer, Mr Harold Darrell. The first charge against Mr Darrell, as an employer, was that between 31st March 2011 and 11th July 2013, as an employer, he had failed to provide health insurance cover for himself and his employees and their dependents.
A second charge was that between 31st March 2011 and 11th July 2013, as an employer, he had deducted more than he was entitled to deduct from the pay of his employees. The third charge was that between the same dates, he had failed to supply written statements to his employees regarding the payroll deductions made and the health cover that was not provided.
The fourth charge that Mr Darrell, as an employer, faced was that he refused to provide information and documents when and after he had been requested to do so by a Government Tax Inspector.
Mr Caines must appear for Mention on 17th September. At this time, a trial date will be set. Mr Caines was granted bail of $2,000.
Mr Darrell will have his matter tried in December 2013. He, also, was granted bail of $2,000.
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This is but a tip of the iceberg. EMPLOYERS…YOU HAVE BEEN PUT ON NOTICE! There needs to be MORE GOVT. TAX INSPECTORS because this is nothing more than PURE, UNADULTERATED THEFT FROM THE WORKERS! UNIONS…WHERE IS YOUR OUTRAGE ON THIS!!!!!??????
30 years late but I guess it’s a start!!!!!!!!!! LMAO
they need to look into a certain Security company and their non payment of social insurance
The Tax Inspectors need to investigate a few of these bigger companies as there are some people who are afraid to report their bosses in fear of job dismissal. Yes the Inspectors know a few more but my guess is they dont want to embaress these respected Companies
This is more than the tip of the iceberg!!
This is a good move in the first instance but beware of the law of unintended consequences!!
If all employers who are delinquent with health insurance payments are charged, there will be a lot less businesses operating in Bermuda. It would be interesting to know how these two employers were chosen since it appears that they are relatively small operations with a relatively small amount that has not been paid.
The general public should request information on which other employers are delinquent and also inforamtion about what are the largest amounts outstanding.
The first time in over 10 possibly 15 years? Wasn’t that the PLP rule down to a tee?
At least the OBA is cleaning up the mess they inherited.
No, this was the responsibility of the DPP`s office. They dropped the ball by not pursuing the prosecutions to begin with. The laws have been on the books for ages. Political parties themselves are not responsible for prosecuting murderers, rapists and thieves. We have Government lawyers for that.
This is great. Do it more. These employers are effectively stealing from their employees. There is no excuse.
Great news!! whats next,go after the thousands of dollars in unpaid traffic offences??
You may find a lot of smaller employers are struggling to make the payroll to ALL their staff. Not saying this is an excuse but they are doing their best to keep people employed and paid. The alternative is to simply let people go…
There are also some employers who have part time employees that are working full time hours consistently, every week for months on end, and not receiving the benefits of full time employees. And these companies have former government high ups as directors. Shame on you all.
Wish there were also some way of going after employers who, using the recession as an excuse, are paying their employees less than fair wages.
There are also the employers that deduct social insurance and don’t pay it! I know this for a fact as a friend of mine who worked for a local temping agency was having social insurance deductions taken from her payroll but an enquiry to the local government offices revealed that no social insurance had been paid in on her behalf. This goes much deeper than you would imagine.
I am afraid that this type of criminality on the part of certain employers has been going on for years; even under the PLP government.
This is outright theft of worker’s social benifits that is only found out when the worker goes to use his or her insurance for medical reasons or worst when one is expecting a pension only to find out that it has not been passed on by the employer.
Any employer engaging in this type of thing should face the full force of the law including the seizure of property and other assets to be repaid to the victims of this crime.
I would advise anybody that is worried about whether employers are deducting payments and not passing them onto social insurance/ medical insurance to contact the relevant departments. There is nothing police/dpp can do without a complainant
Son of the soil…………
It was just a matter of time before they got you.
About time, so many over the years have financially enriched themselves off the backs of workers, withholding payroll tax, health insurance and other deductions for themselves. They should also be charged for theft as far as i’m concerned.
Actually, quite often it is a choice of pay the tax and go out of business or not pay the tax and hang on. There are no winners here because if Government set about collecting all arrears, quite a few employers would go to the wall, translation more unemployed. The real solution is fix the economy.