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Job losses in private sector: Islandwide protest campaign launched

03 Jun 2020

By Sarah Hannan The Inter-Company Employees’ Union (ICEU) yesterday (2) launched a protest campaign against the job losses faced by private company employees in the past two months. Speaking to The Morning, ICEU President Wasantha Samarasinghe noted that despite the President requesting all state and private companies to not layoff their employees during the lockdown period announced to prevent the spread of Covid-19, as many as 300,000 persons have lost their jobs or experienced pay cuts of up to 65%. “It is not only the company owners that we are holding responsible, but also the incumbent Government. The least they could have done was issue a gazette notification indicating that no employee was to be laid off work during that period, and instructions should have been released on how pay cuts were to be imposed, so that the average person could have survived even with a reduced pay package during this time.” Samarasinghe also pointed out that many garment factory workers had been laid off, and the ICEU was gathering information on each and every one of them in order to file complaints at the respective area labour tribunals for action. He also suggested that the Government could have looked at issuing loans to the companies, enabling them to at least pay half of their salaries over those two months. The ICEU had also observed that some institutions had taken the opportunity to immediately downsize their companies and after the work-from-home (WFH) period ended, they had not even communicated to the employees whether they would be called back to work. These employees had not been even told about their work arrangements when the companies had closed on 20 March due to the curfew. Samarasinghe further noted that since protests cannot be convened by bringing in many people, the union members are to conduct protests in front of the labour tribunal offices in each area after they hand over the complaints to the office.

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