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Downtown wholesales still abusing workers
Employees complain of awful conditions
BY DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE Sunday Observer staff writer [email protected]
Sunday, March 06, 2011
FOUR years after a Sunday Observer exposé on the harrowing working conditions facing some women employed in wholesale stores in downtown Kingston, little seems to have changed. In fact, checks by the newspaper over the past four weeks suggest the situation has worsened.
"We have to work from Sunday to Sunday," one 18-year-old employee of a wholesale on East Queen Street told the Sunday Observer two weeks ago. "And we don't get no overtime pay. We have to work from 7:00 in the morning to 7:00 at nights. Sometimes all after 8:00 the store just closing up. On Sundays is 7:00 am to 3:00 pm."
Some female employees at wholesale enterprises claim they don’t get a chance to rest their feet or eat lunch and complain they can’t report the poor conditions under which they work for fear of victimisation.
For this they are compensated a mere $500, which is included in the $4,500 they are paid for the seven-day work week.
She admitted that they work the usual half-day on a Wednesday when the entire downtown business district closes at noon. However, for this, a half-a-day's pay is deducted from their already meagre salaries.
The worker further explained that in her place of employ, she and her female co-workers are not given the one hour for lunch as required by law. Instead, one person has to leave to purchase lunch for the others who must continue working. Even then, lunch is reduced to quick bites in-between attending to customers.
"Every minute you see a different worker because somebody leave the work," she said. "Nobody can't manage it. We have to take turns to clean the bathroom."
According to the young woman<span style="font-weight: bold">, her employer habitually urinates on the floor of the restroom then orders the workers to go clean it.</span> "Sometimes it look like spite," she fumed.
In 2007, the Sunday Observer's six-day undercover probe was carried out in response to a research paper done by Ann-Murray Brown for her Master's thesis at the University of the West Indies.
Brown's research found that women were — among other things — denied maternity benefits, overtime pay, sick leave, prevented from sitting for entire days, and made to do tough manual work. At the time, there were an estimated 600 women working in wholesale bargain stores in the downtown Kingston business district.
Brown's report, titled 'Gender and Labour in Jamaica, Modern day Slavery?', also cited human rights breaches, as well as violations of Jamaica's employment and labour laws and the International Labour Organisation's declaration on the fundamental principles and rights at the workplace.
In addition to long working hours at the wholesales, which employed mainly women, Brown's report said there was a lack of health benefits and leave entitlements and workers were forced to cope with improper ventilation and sanitary conveniences.
Yet, despite all the breaches, Brown said the women — mainly uneducated 18 - 25-year-old mothers with several offsprings and who mostly lived in the slums of downtown Kingston —<span style="font-weight: bold"> did not recognise that their human rights </span>were being violated and that they could get legal redress.
Following the Sunday Observer story, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security opened an investigation into the conditions and later reported that its probe had verified some of the conditions raised in the study. Senior ministry officials met with more than 70 owners and operators of a number of wholesale establishments to sensitise them on the requirements of the labour laws and to provide a forum for them to voice their concerns.
But in the recent Sunday Observer probe, a number of workers said the conditions are no better than four years ago, and they are again desperate for help.
One female worker — who feared victimisation if she revealed her identity — confirmed claims of having to clean toilets — including mopping up urine on the floor and cleaning the toilet bowl — despite being in the middle of serving food items to customers.
Another female worker who walked off the job three weeks ago after just a month and a week, said she could not take the insanitary conditions at her former place of employ.
"The last week mi deh deh they took out chicken out the freezer cause it couldn't hold, and put them on some crate and leave it overnight. The next morning rat bite up the whole a dem! When one of the girls selling (chicken) from out the freezer, the owner come round there and cut off the rat bite and tell her fi sell them cause him nah let anything waste," the young woman told the Sunday Observer.
"A whole heap a rat in the place, all some big rat! They all draw weh turkey neck go round a one back room and when we find them they all start change colour. So the place stink bad!"
She lamented that following the gruesome find, she and another worker were instructed to use bleach to clean the room. They spent half the day carrying out this task, she said, only to be compensated with a bottle of juice that cost $70.
"The place stink so till all three days the scent still there," she said.
One employee in another wholesale, who opted not to be named, said she wants to become a practical nurse, and while she hopes to save towards making this possible, the $4,500 she is paid per week is hardly enough to take her to and from work each day, much more pay school fees. In addition, she has to fulfil her responsibility of helping to send her six-year-old brother to school and purchasing snacks for her two younger sisters.
"In September I want to start nursing school. If is even $6,000 or $5,500 for the week (I was being paid) it wouldn't be so bad," she said.
Although seats have been made available for workers in the wholesale where she works, she said as soon as they sit down they are given some task to do -- even when there aren't many customers. These tasks can range from cleaning the toilet, lifting heavy drink crates, cleaning and unpacking items in the storeroom, to washing their bosses' lunch dishes.
"They don't employ any man and is we have to lift up crate a drinks, bag a flour and dem tings deh," she said. "It really bad."
Another female employee explained that despite working long hours, if she or her colleagues were 10 minutes late for work in the mornings, they were sent home for the day without pay.
"One day mi sick and they sent me home and the people dem draw out the day pay from mi money," she said. "If you say anything, the woman (female boss) tell you gwan, 'cause nuff people out deh want work."
She said while she was not qualified for vacation leave, not having been employed long enough, another employee of over two years has been asking for hers but it has never been granted.
When the Sunday Observer contacted Labour Minister Pearnel Charles he said that the ministry had started work towards improving working conditions at wholesale establishments, and laws to protect employees already existed, such as those dealing with the payment of salaries, overtime, vacation, sick and maternity leave and termination of employment.
However, Charles insisted that officials have no way of knowing the true situation if workers are not reporting breaches and ill-treatment.
"We set the basis on which the changes should be done, and if they are not done, then the employees should make a report and then we would follow-up," Charles said. "If they don't make a report we can't know what is happening.
"What is also enforced is vacation leave, maternity leave and holidays," Charles added. "These are enforced by law under the Maternity Act and the Labour Relations Act."
He said there are certain benefits employers cannot be forced to fund, for example health schemes for workers, which is something that must be negotiated between employer and employee.
However, he pointed out that what is enforced by law is the minimum wage, below which no worker should be paid.
The National Minimum Wage was increased from $4,070 per 40-hour work week or $101.75 per hour, to $4,500 or $112.50 per hour at the end of last month.
Notwithstanding this, one of the employees interviewed by the Sunday Observer said many women were simply too afraid of being fired to report any bad treatment.
"People want to talk but they don't want to lose their jobs," the worker said. "Everybody wish to talk out."
She and her co-workers say they have had a number of conversations among themselves about the poor working conditions, and some wanted to complain to the authorities, but claimed their gruelling work schedules made it difficult.
"We don't get any time to go and complain. Memba sey you don't get time-off and if you even come work late they send you home without pay, and we can't afford that. No betta nuh deh, miss," she said hopelessly. "Maybe if dem (government) even send people come check up then the people dem (wholesale operators) would do better."
Following publication of the 2007 report and the intervention of the labour ministry the wholesale operators promised improved conditions including payment of overtime allowances and some sort of health insurance.
However, the Sunday Observer was unable to find any establishment where this had materialised.
Director of the Pay and Conditions of Employment Branch (PCEB) in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, Michael Kennedy said the branch has been monitoring the various entities under its portfolio, including wholesales in downtown Kingston where applicable, and responding to any specific concerns workers bring to the attention of the ministry.
However, he noted that statistics are not kept for wholesale workers as an individual group, therefore he was unable to give a figure on the number of complaints received from workers.
"A vast majority of complaints received by the PCEB over the years deal with long hours of work in comparison to wages received," Kennedy said in an e-mail response to the Sunday Observer. "The PCEB has investigated many complaints over the last couple of years and this has resulted in thousands of dollars in arrears being paid to affected workers in relation to the minimum wage underpayment."
When contacted, senior medical officer for health for Kingston and St Andrew at the Public Health Department, Dr Pauline Weir, insisted that routine checks are done at wholesales and other food establishments across the country once per year.
"But if there is a report made about a particular establishment we will do an inspection at any time," Dr Weir said.
She also advised that persons who observe health violations at any of these business places should send a report to the Public Health Department.
A Public Health Inspector in Kingston, who said she was not authorised to speak to the media, told the Sunday Observer that heath departments located in each parish were responsible for inspections of all wholesale establishments done in their parish. She said once these places were identified, particularly the ones selling food items, inspectors go in and insist that the operators apply for a food inspection licence. Persons are asked to fill out an application form and pay a fee ranging from $5,000 to $7,000 to get the licence, which has to be renewed annually for them to continue operating. The renewal of licences is reliant on whether the business establishments pass inspection.
"A lot of food establishments are in breach," she said. "Sometimes we even find places that need immediate closure, while for the others we give them a work plan and specific time to remedy the breach and then do follow-up checks."
She explained that no notice is given as to when inspectors will visit.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/...#ixzz1Fr90JJUk
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