Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/413175
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2014 8 News Workers, including East Europeans and African migrants, employed in precarious conditions CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The law stipulates that the mini- mum weekly wage of €165.58, "shall be related to an average of forty hours per week calculated initially over a period of six consecutive weeks, and thereafter commencing on the fol- lowing first Monday, provided that the hours of work shall not exceed forty-eight hours in any one week." A contract signed with the agency by one of the workers who contacted MaltaToday lays down that the em- ployer shall pay the employee a net monthly salary of €900 for 252 hours payable after the 25th day of each month. Moreover the contract says that the employer shall also pay for the accommodation, uniform, local taxes and national insurance contri- butions. However, the value of the accommodation is not quantified in the documents. Since the contract says that the workers have to work for 252 hours a month, this means that the employ- ees work a minimum of 58 hours a week, 10 hours above the maximum set by law. Moreover, the contracts stipulate that the overtime will be paid at €4 an hour, again in breach of the wage regulation order which stipulates that all time worked in excess of for- ty-eight hours in any one week shall be paid at €6.21 per hour. Beyond the precarious conditions, other documents confirm that the employers owe the foreign workers large sums of money and the con- tracts were not honoured. MaltaToday is in possession of other documents issued by the De- partment of Industrial and Employment Relations which confirm that one worker is owed €1,090 by JF Services Limited, which employed him as a Security Agent/ Fire Warder at Palumbo Shipyard. The young Romanian, who is an AutoCAD designer, worked as a Fire Warder at Palumbo for five weeks, in which he totalled an impressive 314 hours. In one particular week, the man worked 12 hour shifts every day of the week, Sunday included. He explained that the Palumbo paid JF Services around €15 per hour for each Fire Warder, however he only got €3.60 per hour. In addition, he explained "I have never had such a job, which carries its own health and safety risks, however I was sent to Palumbo where I got a two-hour training course on the first day at work." Following his stint at Palumbo, the man was sent to work as a labourer at Bajada New Energy where he was asked to mount solar panels. In the three weeks the man worked at Ba- jada, he clocked up 114 hours. After eight weeks, the man resigned when the company failed to pay his wages. Despite being given a number of small "advance payments," JF Services refused to pay the man his wages after claiming that the hours submitted did not match the hours provided by Palumbo. "I was told by the company direc- tors that there was a discrepancy of a few hours between the hours I sub- mitted, which did not differ from my weekly roster, and the hours which were submitted by Palumbo," he said, explaining that all small pay- ments he received were in cash. In addition, the man, who reached Malta at the end of Foreign workers in backbreaking 'These foreigners are a funny brand of people… they're not like us. We made use of them for five weeks but now we do not employ any foreigners' – Peter Formosa, JF managing director