Staff at the Bermuda Cement Company (BCC) will not supply Bermuda with cement until they can be guaranteed that their jobs are safe.

But BCC's General Manager Jim Butterfield placed all of the blame on the company's landlord - the West End Development Company (WEDCO) who he said is “taking over our company”.

“The bottom line is that they want ownership”, Mr. Butterfield said.

And he said that his workers would no longer be “the flour to everyone else's bread” until WEDCO could assure him that BCC will still be running in 2005, when their lease expires.

“They took the law into their own hands today,” he said, when rather than extending the old 20 year lease, WEDCO said they wanted to implant a “parent company” at Bermuda Cement, who would be relegated into purely an operational role.

“This might be a way for some people to make great financial gains by taking over our company,” he said. “But we are not going to stand by and let that happen. We would rather see the company open up to the public before we are run by a group of individuals who we do not even know who they are.”

He claimed that WEDCO was going to put another parent company above BCC, which would then become the “operating company,” according to WEDCO's new proposal.

BCC supply's cement to every major construction company in Bermuda.

Large companies, contractors and organisations that will be affected by the cement shortage will be: Bierman's Concrete, SAL, D&J Construction, Gorhams and even Government and Works & Engineering he said.

But rather than there being a stand-off at Dockyard between construction companies and BCC, Mr. Butterfield said that “truck drivers who go there every day and rely on BCC to supply them said they don't like the uncertainly either and have withdrawn their services.”

The cement saga began on June 15, Mr. Butterfield said, when BCC put in a submission to operate the plant -which the company has been doing for 40 years- to WEDCO.

“And last week we were told that none of these submissions - for which we learned there were several- were going to be honoured,” he said. “Then on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, the WEDCO group told us that we would hear shortly about a new plan. We gave them one week to let us know what the new plan was. But the staff at BCC decided that they had had enough of the uncertainty”.

But the BCC boss warned that “the trade's (supply of cement) will dry up very quickly”

“There is a desperate shortage of concrete block right now. It is due to the high demand for cement products,” he said.

Bermuda's construction boom had hit such high levels, he said that concrete blocks -normally made locally- were being shipped in from America.

“In usual times, people do not do that because they pay more for it. But if you are building a house right now some people don't care of the cost,” he said.

So in the current climate of demand outstripping supply so quickly, WEDCO's General Manager Lloyd Telford requested a meeting with BCC within an hour of the stoppage yesterday.

At this meeting, that Mr. Telford proposed their plan where for BCC would be given the position of “operating company” at the cement plant, which would be owned by another “parent company”.

“Lloyd Telford was the only one there,” he said. “WEDCO is often described as a ‘they' but we don't know who ‘they' are. We know he is speaking for others, but we do not know who these other people are.”

He asked if the new parent company would be ready to take over by December 2005 as the dispute had “now dragged on for two years”.

“Forty years ago we leased a vacant property,” he said. “There was nothing there. We put the equipment on the site. The silos we are going to have to leave. But the equipment inside is ours but who would want to buy that? It is a difficult position.”

Many difficult questions arose from WEDCO's demands he said, for example who was going to purchase BCC's plant equipment at a cost of $2 to $3 million.

And he questioned the legality of the proposed take-over.

“Our lawyer was not at the meeting but it raises a lot of questions,” he said. “They did not change the goal posts, they changed the whole game”.

Regarding the vessel that the six plant workers were working on last night, Mr. Butterfield said: “They have a vessel in and they are serving that vessel but they are not serving the trade. 3,000 tons of concrete (arrived in Dockyard last night). The staff are manning the ship. They are just doing their job.”

This cement, however, might not reach concrete mixers for some time, will until BCC management can assure the workers that their jobs are safe, he said.”One guy has been there 24 years and he doesn't know if he will have a job next year,” he said.

And he revealed that WEDCO had “bought (BCC's) silence” for the last year: “They said they would trash our submissions” if they spoke to the press, but said he finally broke the silence when WEDCO trashed their ideas on the site's future.

He conceded that not selling cement was “an unusual thing to do in a business” but he said his workers were “not satisfied about management not being able to give them any answers to their future”.

“But management can't get any answers from the landlord,” he said.