BIGWU tackles Cepep's 'disguised employment'

The Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union (BIGWU) has vowed to fight on behalf of the 11,500 workers dismissed following the government's restructuring of the Community-Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (Cepep).

Over 300 contractors were fired by Cepep Company Ltd at the end of June, affecting thousands of workers who were given one month's pay after termination.

The government has claimed the restructuring would help provide more "sustainable employment" for workers.

In a release on September 26, the union said it planned to trigger section 2 (4) (b) of the Industrial Relations Act to have the court declare that Cepep Company Ltd was the employer of the 11,500 dismissed workers.

The union said it planned to prove that workers dismissed on June 27 were in fact employees of the company.

It said the union did its research and "lifted its voice” on behalf of those workers because the government saw it fit to terminate 300 Cepep contractors under the pretext of an audit.

The release said the company’s claim that these workers were employed by 300 contractors and not by the company itself was false.

“And that claim is what we call disguised employment – an arrangement deliberately structured to give the appearance of independence while hiding the underlying reality: Cepep Company Ltd is the employer.”

The union said it could prove that Cepep was the employer and not the contractors through five points.

It said Cepep supervised field operations to ensure targets were met, the company developed and implemented work schedules, it assessed performance and imposed remedial action, it quantified daily work measurements and reviewed time sheets and authorised payments.

It said, “If Cepep directs the work, supervises the work, evaluates the work and most importantly, pays the wages – then Cepep is the employer. No amount of disguise can change that legal fact.”

The union called on all Cepep workers to join them.

“We put the Cepep Company and government on notice: disguised employment is a fraud on the law and this union will tear away that disguise. We will not rest until every Cepep worker is recognised, reinstated and compensated.”

It added this was a fight to end the era of disguised employment once and for all. On September 14 it was reported that the union had filed 160 trade disputes with the Ministry of Labour over the firing of over 400 Unemployment Relief Programme workers.

BIGWU’s president Don Devenish then said on September 13 that the union also intended to seek legal recourse by charging Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Khadijah Ameen and the ministry with an industrial relations infringement under section 25 of the Retrenchment and Severance Benefit Act.