Workers give GMB ultimatum over salaries

Business
Grain Marketing Board (GMB) workers have given management a seven-day ultimatum to clear outstanding salaries

Grain Marketing Board (GMB) workers have given management a seven-day ultimatum to clear outstanding salaries, failure of which they will stage a sit-in at the parastatal’s head office until their demands are met.

By OUR STAFF

According to an internal memorandum seen by Standardbusiness, the GMB Workers’ Union said effective from last Thursday, management should clear all oustanding salaries within seven days saying employees were failing to meet their day-to-day needs.

“Please be advised that we are giving management seven working days with effect from February 5 2015 to pay our outstanding salaries of at least three months and bonus,” the workers said.

“We have been chased away by landlords. We are now destitute, while we are working and generating revenue through sales. Our children are not going to school. This is now too much and there is no shared misery. Failure by management to meet this demand , all GMB employees shall convene at GMB head office until [our] demand has been met. The date of such action shall be communicated after [the] lapsing of the ultimatum.”

GMB Workers Union president Steven Machaya confirmed the development and also that workers have not been paid for the past five months. “We are giving management seven days to pay the outstanding salaries and if they fail we will go to the headquarters to demand our salaries and will not leave until we get our salaries,” Machaya said.

“We feel management is continuing to make unnecessary expenditures at the expense of the welfare of workers. Each month we are making sales and this money should pay our salaries.”

He said for the past year, management has been deducting money for medical aid, housing and pension fund from the salaries but the payments were not being remitted to the relevant service providers and organisations.

GMB also owes farmers $52,4 million for the grain delivered in the 2013/2014 summer cropping season.