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Lebanon – Contract worker protest gets bloody

23 September 2014

An ongoing dispute between contract workers and Beirut-based state-run electricity company Electricite du Liban (EDL) remains unresolved, with two contract workers threatening to commit suicide during a recent protest, reports The Daily Star.

After years working on temporary contracts with no social security, paid holidays, or any other employment benefits; the workers are demanding full-time employment at EDL either now or when their temporary contracts expire in 2016.

In August, hundreds of contract workers pitched tents and locked most of the rooms in EDL’s headquarters to press the government to enrol all of the part-time workers in the company’s payroll with full benefits.

The nearly 1,800 contract workers rejected an offer by EDL’s management to undergo written and performance tests, after which the company would recruit only those who passed.

EDL argued that there are vacancies for 897 employees and that the part-time workers have previously agreed to these terms. It has offered the redundant staff two months’ salary for every year they worked with the company.

The contract workers dismissed EDL’s offer to hire only some of the part-time workers as an arbitrary decision. They also said that it would be absurd to ask part-time technicians to undergo a performance test even though they have been making all the repairs for more than 10 years.

Things became so heated during the latest protest that one worker began cutting himself in front of reporters until he was covered in blood, and another poured fuel over his body and threatened to immolate himself until his colleagues intervened.

Monday’s protest saw the strike move from EDL’s east Beirut headquarters to those of the National Electrical Utility Company (NEU), one of EDL’s three service provider companies. The sit-in outside NEU was to voice the workers’ rejection of the company’s decision to give some of them only half of their August wages.

On 15 September the company paid August’s salary in full to those who had signed the pledge. It paid half to those who had not signed and asked them to do so if they wanted the rest of their wages.

Carla Aoun, CEO of NEU, told The Daily Star: “We had called on our employees to sign a pledge stating that they will not violate the law in their future actions, but many of them refused to sign. It was an act of good will from our side. We wanted to say that even though you didn’t sign, we are providing you with half the salary.”

As the conflict continues with little sign of any resolution, Beirut has experienced a strict rationing of electricity, with daily power cuts increasing from three hours a day to 12.