Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

The Brazil­ian firm OAS Con­stru­to­ra Ltd, the main con­trac­tor on the $7.5 bil­lion Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion, has in­creased its wage of­fer to six per cent.How­ev­er, this has been re­ject­ed by the ma­jor­i­ty of work­ers, af­ter a meet­ing with the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union on Wednes­day.The lat­est round of bi­lat­er­al meet­ings took place on Tues­day with five work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives and ex­ec­u­tives of OAS, in­clud­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant Pe­ter Collins and project man­ag­er Leonar­do Lu­na.

Labour re­la­tions con­sul­tant Aaron Moyne, who is ad­vis­ing the work­ers, said OAS had moved from its ini­tial pro­pos­al of 5.5 per cent to six per cent."This is to be ap­plied across the board should work­ers ac­cept the pro­pos­al. There­fore, OAS labour­ers at $24 per hour will re­ceive $25.44 with the in­crease, while Soltange (an­oth­er firm in­volved in the high­way con­struc­tion) con­tin­ues at $30 per hour," Moyne point­ed out.He said OAS said the six per cent in­crease would be ap­plied in six months if work­ers re­ceived very good or ex­cel­lent scores in their per­for­mance ap­praisals.

"A fringe ben­e­fit of $1.44 per hour was pro­posed each fort­night if work­ers have no dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion, no in­jury and near-per­fect at­ten­dance," Moyne said.The com­pa­ny had al­so "re­tract­ed its orig­i­nal $3,000 end-of-year safe­ty bonus with oner­ous con­di­tions and in­stead has cho­sen to host a safe­ty raf­fle every oth­er month."

He added that caps, flash­lights, hand­bags, key chains and oth­er to­kens, nor­mal­ly giv­en to all work­ers on lo­cal con­struc­tion projects, would now be dis­trib­uted on the ba­sis of the raf­fle.

Moyne al­so said the OW­TU and work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­sult­ed with 385 af­fect­ed work­ers on Wednes­day and they were dis­heart­ened by the lat­est pro­pos­als.Mean­while, in an in­ter­nal memo sent to work­ers on Tues­day, OAS told work­ers they must present a po­lice cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter to the hu­man re­source de­part­ment. OAS al­so ad­vised that all em­ploy­ee per­son­al files were be­ing re­viewed for ap­praisal. Work­ers were asked to sub­mit the cer­tifi­cates by to­day. How­ev­er, some work­ers com­plained that it usu­al­ly took two weeks to get a cer­tifi­cate.

OAS re­sponds

A se­nior of­fi­cial at OAS said on Wednes­day that the com­pa­ny was aware that a po­lice cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter may take more than a week to be processed, so it would ac­cept a re­ceipt for the cer­tifi­cate ap­pli­ca­tion.OAS al­so said the six per cent in­crease would be paid retroac­tive­ly from June 1.The com­pa­ny said it re­cent­ly re­searched com­par­a­tive salaries in the civ­il con­struc­tion sec­tor and analy­sis showed OAS salaries matched or ex­ceed­ed civ­il con­struc­tion mar­ket rates. "Nev­er­the­less, OAS is pleased to ad­vise that there will be an in­crease of six per cent across the board for all its bi­month­ly-paid work­ers. OAS al­so an­nounces the de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment a fringe ben­e­fit to all bi­month­ly-paid work­ers. This ben­e­fit shall be en­forced with im­me­di­ate ef­fect to all work­ers who have passed pro­ba­tion and shall be ac­crued retroac­tive­ly from the first day af­ter the pro­ba­tion pe­ri­od."OAS said per­for­mance ap­praisals would now be done se­mi-an­nu­al­ly and in the case of good or ex­cel­lent rat­ings, the salary would be up­grad­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

OW­TU re­sponds

In a state­ment Wednes­day, the OW­TU al­leged that work­ers were be­ing pres­sured by the com­pa­ny as bi­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue."The threat of dis­missals and oth­er dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tions loom heavy over OAS work­ers. There ap­pears to be no gen­uine in­ten­tion to en­gage and mo­ti­vate work­ers as they pour blood, sweat and tears in­to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment," the union said.

It al­so said a cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter is not men­tioned in the work­ers' four-page con­tract."If it was in­deed a pre­req­ui­site for hir­ing, why did the com­pa­ny flout its own re­cruit­ment laws? The man­ag­er re­spon­si­ble ought to ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty. Man­age­ment of­fi­cials should be the first to pro­duce a po­lice cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter as two man­agers have been ac­cused of ac­cept­ing $2,500 bribes to se­cure jobs but were nev­er in­ves­ti­gat­ed."Say­ing the OW­TU was baf­fled about why a cer­tifi­cate is need­ed now, OW­TU asked, "Does the com­pa­ny fore­see crimes be­ing com­mit­ted at the site by work­ers it will­ing­ly se­lect­ed and has got­ten sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­tion from?"