Bermuda Industrial Union leader Chris Furbert has rejected as “utter nonsense” a statement that workers at Kentucky Fried Chicken (Bermuda) had accepted a contract they had rejected last year.The company had sought to write a new agreement when the collective bargaining agreement expired in December 2011. But the BIU insisted that the terms of the expired contract should remain in place until a new one is agreed.Negotiations broke down in April last year when the BIU refused to take part in any further negotiations. Instead, members marched on the Queen Street premises and called for customers to boycott the business as a “last resort” to management’s “back door tactics”. The company had set up a subsidiary, KFC (Operations), through which it negotiated fresh contracts with its non-unionised staff.Then-Economy and Trade Minister Patrice Minors referred the matter to arbitration, and just weeks after that, the union won an injunction preventing unionised KFC (Bermuda) employees from being forced into accepting less favourable work terms.KFC director Jason Benevides said last week that unionised staff’s terms were the same as those accepted by other workers last year. But Mr Furbert told the media yesterday that the company had agreed to pay redundancy to those who did not accept the new terms — a concession that it had not been prepared to make last year.“They were not offered redundancy pay in accordance with the CBA, and they were not offered redundancy pay in accordance with the Employment Act,” Mr Furbert said referring to company’s offer in 2012.He added:“ The employer never put the provision on the table until May 2013, which was 12 to 13 months after they had been telling the staff you either go work for KFCO or you don’t have a job.”He confirmed that only “about” one person had decided not to accept the new contract, opting instead for redundancy.At question time, Mr Furbert revealed that another dispute had erupted because management had terminated two workers, one of whom was the chief shop steward.The company was “very fortunate” as it had not been subjected to industrial action as a result of what he said were improper terminations, Mr Furbert continued.One termination decision was made while the worker was on certified sick leave while the other was fired on the spot for insubordination, he claimed.“These are the kind of things that management does down there and I don’t know how the staff at KFC are going to tolerate that but at some point in time you got to say enough is enough.”But Mr Furbert conceded he was “extremely disappointed” that the workers had not taken action in support of their colleague.“The workers did not feel they need to have any kind of industrial action to support their chief shop steward. It’s very unfortunate. But let me just say to Bermuda that that’s not going to happen at every workplace.”