BEIRUT: Former EDL workers who are currently contracted by the service provider KVA shut down the company’s headquarters north Beirut Tuesday after receiving only half of their August salaries.
“We were paid part of our salaries 20 days ago and we were promised to receive the remainder in a matter of days,” Ali Al-Hajj Yousef, one of the contract workers, told The Daily Star. “If they do not promise to pay them in one hour from now, we will block their building again tomorrow.”
The executives and staff at KVA, one of the three service providers that manage Lebanon’s electricity sector, were unable to reach their offices at Dora due to the protest today.
“We did not pay half their salaries because they were on strike,” said Jamal Hatoum, the human resources manager at the company.
“And we are also not finding enough funds to pay the wages,” he added.
According to Hatoum, KVA has come under financial pressure because of delayed payments from the state-owned Electricite du Liban, as well as the recent workers' strike.
“We stopped working seven weeks ago due to the strike and before that, EDL had not paid us for eight months,” Hatoum explained to The Daily Star.
Contract workers on Monday also shut down the building of another service provider, NEU Company, for not paying all of their wages for August.
However, for NEU, whose CEO Carla Aoun promised to pay the wages after a meeting with workers’ representative, the suspended salaries were due to a conflict around a pledge that the workers refused to sign.
The pledge was a way to push workers to make a legally binding promise not to engage in ‘unlawful’ activities. After most workers refused to sign, the company said it would only pay half their salary, but later went back on its decision.
The contract workers have been striking and blocking EDL’s main headquarters for more than 40 days.
After years of no social security, paid vacation, or any other employment benefits under day labor contracts at EDL, the workers are demanding full-time employment with EDL, either now or when their temporary employment with the service providers expires in 2016. However, EDL’s administration decided to only hire 897 out of close to 2000 workers, prompting the ongoing strike.
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