Staff of the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel have held a protest over what they say are unfavourable working conditions and their outstanding salary arrears from 2019.
One of them, a lady, told Citi News that, “I’ve been cheated and the hotel owes me. The hotel hasn’t paid me. We are working. Some of us have kids at home. It’s really frustrating. We are being cheated on. My GLICO insurance has been deducted. Where is the money?”
One gentleman said, “If you are a prudent manager, your employees cannot go eight months backpay salary without being paid. In this pandemic, we’ve been hit, but because of lack of prudent management [we have not been paid]. You haven’t paid your employees for eight months. You are not paying their deposit administration scheme regularly. It’s been about one or two years. We have end of service benefit that should be paid and it’s not being paid.”
Meanwhile, the Principal Industrial Relations Officer for the Industrial Workers Union (ICU), Odelia Sowu, who came by to calm tensions urged the workers to return to post as negotiations are ongoing to address all their concerns.
“We’ve started a very long haul in the area of our negotiations for the June salary and we appreciate the fact that today being the 27th of July we have not yet received our June salary. We want to acknowledge the fact that as employees, we are also having some challenges. You have families back at home that you need to care for and without salaries, it’s becoming a challenge so in view of this, we have taken a second look at the overall negotiation process.”
“The good news is that approval has been given for the payment of 50%. What is outstanding now is the July salary so we’ll also open up discussions on it. Now that we’ve been able to come to a conclusion, kindly go back to your respective job roles and we’ll see the way forward,” she assured the aggrieved workers.
Source: CNR
