Who will speak, fight for justice for the workers?

EDITOR: Who will speak for the workers? I am acquainted with someone who previously worked as a manager of a business. This individual, when he took up employment, was underpaid, but the real problem was that there were other workers who were underpaid, received about 30 minutes for lunch and some didn’t even get time for lunch, since they had to work during their lunch hour and still were made to work beyond 4 p.m.

These workers never received overtime pay and were robbed of their full lunch hour as stipulated by law. The manager l mentioned above, used his position to ensure that the workers receive their full lunch hour and overtime pay. In time, the owners of the business spotted the change and justice given to the workers by the new manager. As a result, the manager was called up by the owners and was asked whose side he was on and they wanted him to continue to rob the workers of their justice. He had to quit his job for doing justice to the workers.

This true situation reflects the injustice done to some workers by the employees. The sad thing is that no one speaks on workers’ behalf.

We know that there are unions, but they seem to be more interested in other areas. Also most of these workers are not in any union. Thus, they are exploited. It’s so unfortunate, because if the workers decide to stand up and claim their rights, in some cases they would loose their job. In this “hard guava crop”, where work is hard to come by, and workers have family to take care of, most employees bear this exploitation in order to keep their jobs.

It is time that the labour department does some investigations and random checks to ensure that workers are treated fairly. Those businesses that are guilty of exploitation should be sanctioned.

Even worse, is that in some workplaces, NIS is deducted from the workers’ pay, but their deductions are never paid to NIS? This is highway robbery and these employers ought to be dealt with.

Kennard King