[ad_1]
Some 145 workers work in the cleaning field at the university, 70 of whom are employees of AUB owners directly affiliated with their management, and 65 day laborers receive their salary from the company “SAMCO”, which has been engaged for more than twenty years. with cleaning work at the university under successively renewed contracts. For years, these day laborers had complained to the university administration about the unfair working conditions they suffered and demanded that they pressure the company to improve their conditions. One of them explained to Al-Akhbar: “It is true that we are employees of SAMCO, but for years we have been working in a university that respects human rights, and workers’ rights must be among the priorities that the university administration take into consideration when including the fair terms of contract for the workers ”. He noted that “we work 12 days a month in exchange for an allowance of 41 thousand pounds a day, without insurance, noting that many of us have had accidents while at work”, which include “bending over” buildings to clean their glass facades. .
According to the day laborer, who naturally declined to be identified, “the university community used to sympathize with us when we organized several sit-ins to encourage the company to improve our conditions.” The paradox, according to the same source, is that the university administration finally invoked the unfavorable conditions of the workers to break the contract with SAMCO, and promised to entrust them with a company that would ensure better conditions, “because of their desire to preserve their children. who had served there for a long time. ” (His tour of duty at the university ranges from Eight years to 15 years), to show “the insincerity of these promises and promises.”
As soon as he won the tender, Master Team launched his work by practicing a kind of blackmail to the workers, and raised conditions for the approval of his employment, among them the reduction of his “daily” from 41 thousand pounds to 35 thousand, with a guarantee partial on the pretext that it offered a reduced price for the tender and that its profit margin has been “studied. Carefully. “Sources familiar with the course of the negotiations confirmed that the new company threatened the workers with hiring foreigners at a lower cost if they did not accept its conditions. Al-Akhbar tried to contact the company’s interested persons to determine the validity of these. data, but received no response.
The new company is about reducing the “daily” of each worker from 41 thousand pounds to 35 thousand … or change
In principle, most employees, so far, have rejected what they describe as “humiliating conditions.” However, “some of them began to think about giving up and accepting in the face of difficult economic conditions, even though the 560,000 pounds are no longer worth anything.” While some of them tried to “borrow debt” from the … president of the University, Fadlo Khoury. As “he did not respond to a request we presented to him to pressure the company.” Note that it is difficult to bet on the support of the university administration to these people after, months ago, they fired 600 employees under the pretext of economic conditions, while clues are revealed daily that refute these accusations.
As a result, the university today suffers from a half-full shortage of cleaning workers, while day laborers hope to remain attached to pressure from the university community, as students and teachers. Since “they were with us during the previous period and donated in the last months to pay the rest of our salaries after SAMCO stopped paying our salaries in full since last February.”
Subscribe to «News» on YouTube here
