EL NINO EFFECTS: SMI RETRENCHING 21WORKERS

MBABANE – El Nino’s trail of disaster will cost 21 people their jobs at the Swaziland Meat Industries (SMI).

SMI is currently retrenching workers, an exercise that has not pleased some employees, especially the manner in which it was conducted. A shop steward, who commented on condition of anonymity, said what concerned them the most was that there were no medical examinations done on the workers that would be retrenched. To his knowledge, the law dictates that medical examinations should be done before retrenching workers. Workers feel they do not have a unified voice to address the matter with company management as their union was reported to be having problems. The workers cannot individually confront management about the issue because they fear victimisation. All they will do at the moment is wait for management to approach them then voice out their concern. However, they do not see the likelihood of this happening as retrenchment is already underway.

“We were approached by management and told that there were voluntary retrenchment packages which we could take but if less than expected people take them, others will be retrenched,” he said.
What the workers want is that those who would be retrenched be the first to be considered for hiring when things normalise.

The Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) Acting Secretary General Mduduzi Gina confirmed knowledge of the retrenchment exercise and said they would be addressing the workers tomorrow. Gina revealed that the courts had ruled that the federation deal with employees’ matters as their union was still sorting itself out. He narrated that at the meeting, they would be seeking submissions from the employees, which they would then address with management.

“All we want to see is employees going home with good packages and all labour laws being followed by the company,” Gina said.
He added that they were mostly interested in seeing Section 40 of the Employment Act of 1980 which addresses issues of giving notice of redundancy complied with.
According to the Public Relations and Marketing Officer Philiswa Malinga, about 10 per cent of their workforce stands to be affected. She said most of the workers chose to take the voluntary retrenchment option.

Malinga related that the company had to endure the ripple effect of the drought that saw a reduction in the availability of cattle in the country. She said the drought led to very low numbers of cattle for SMI to process.
“This shortage will most likely last for a number of years, and this will still certainly have unpleasant consequences as we work towards recovery of our previous numbers,” Malinga said.
The drought that hit the country hard last year left about 90 000 cattle dead.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: