Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Truck­ers, Op­er­a­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union Rasheed Mo­hammed is call­ing on the man­age­ment of a south­ern man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny to re­in­state more than 140 work­ers. Mo­hammed said work­ers are be­ing vic­timised for at­tempt­ing to unionise at the com­pa­ny. The con­flict arose on Ju­ly 25, ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, when the com­pa­ny pre­sent­ed re­trench­ment let­ters to more than 100 work­ers in the sales de­part­ment.

An ad­di­tion­al 20 work­ers were hand­ed re­trench­ment let­ters on Fri­day and ter­mi­nat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly, he said, af­ter they were found to be union mem­bers. Mo­hammed said man­age­ment claimed the work­ers' po­si­tions had be­come re­dun­dant and would even­tu­al­ly be out­sourced. He said em­ploy­ees were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work for a new com­pa­ny with full con­ti­nu­ity of ser­vice, but added that con­tracts for the new com­pa­ny did not men­tion sev­er­ance pay.

The com­pa­ny man­age­ment had not re­spond­ed to the union's let­ters about the sit­u­a­tion, he said. "What we are re­al­ly hop­ing for is an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion in this mat­ter. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny feels that the union is a threat to them," he said. Mo­hammed al­so said there was no ev­i­dence of a new com­pa­ny. An in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant, who did not wish to be named, will be meet­ing with em­ploy­ees to­mor­row to draft a let­ter to the Min­istry of Labour on be­half of work­ers. The con­sul­tant said em­ploy­ees' years of ser­vice ranged from one year to 30 years' ser­vice and that the re­trench­ment was il­le­gal.