KFTL contract workers fume over proposed salary increase
Published:Thursday | January 23, 2025 | 5:19 PMKimone Francis/Senior Staff Reporter -
Dissatisfied contract workers at Jamaica’s main import and export terminal are blasting the company and their union following a proposal for a 13.6 per cent salary increase for the years 2020 to 2025.
The information was communicated to workers in an email from Kingston Freeport Terminal Limited’s (KFTL) CEO Captain Jedrzej Mierzewski and a circular from their union, Trades Union Congress.
The contract workers, who requested anonymity, citing fears of victimisation, told The Gleaner that the treatment from the company was tantamount to “modern- day slavery”.
Further, they have labelled union representatives sellouts”, arguing that the union has worked against their interest in seeking to settle on the proposal following a job evaluation.
In the email from Mierzewski, which was sent on January 20, the workers were told that delegates from the Port Authority of Jamaica, Trades Union Congress, CMA CGM head office, and KFTL had been meeting to negotiate the implementation of the job evaluation.
He said the proposal was the best the company could offer in the circumstances and would serve in the best interest of everyone.
The company is proposing to adjust the salary of employees who fall below the 60th percentile, based on the job evaluation, to that mark. It said that this is 10 per cent above market average.
Additionally, an increase to all staff is being proposed payable on the base salaries for each year compounded retroactively.
For 2020, a four per cent increase was proposed and paid (in 2022), the company said. It is now offering a 0.5 per cent increase for 2021, a one per cent increase for 2022, a two per cent increase for 2023, and a 5.5 per cent increase for 2024-25.
This means a 9.23 per cent total in increase compounded for 2021-2025, and an overall 13.6 per cent total increase for the job evaluation for 2020-2025 is on the table.
However, the workers are rejecting the proposal, which they said lacked transparency.
One of the contract workers claimed that while staff members were receiving 100 per cent salaries, as contract workers, they received 75 per cent.
Added to that, he said contract workers were being denied allowances, including premiums for working the night shift. Staff, he said, worked the night shift twice weekly and were paid for it while contract workers were forced to work three nights without pay.
The worker said his group, which makes up the majority at the wharf, is also denied risk and roving allowances though they are made to go to extreme heights to get the job done and are mandated to ‘ship hop’.
“This is more than taking advantage. A modern-day slavery this. The mainline pays for 12 workers to be on the ship. They collect the money for the 12, but they only put like two or four persons on the ship. It’s not pretty,” the worker alleged.
Another worker poured cold water on the job evaluation report, which determines the payment, arguing that the group was not clear on how it was done and the port or ports they were compared with.
“The union coming to tell us that this is a fair offer from what they (the company) were giving us before and that everyone would benefit. We don’t know how the evaluation go or which other port they compared us to because it can’t be local. We are the only port. But the union is agreeing with them, and we don’t know how this evaluation was done,” the worker said.
Efforts by The Gleaner to reach Barry Dawes, general secretary of Trades Union Congress, were unsuccessful. Calls to his cell phone went unanswered, and he did not respond to a WhatsApp request for comment.