Hi Cyprian,
I work at Carrefour Kenya which is part of Majid Al Futtaim Group, specifically Hub branch as cashier. Well due hard economic times occasioned by closure of many companies we have to put up with the functional ones, as result these “functional companies” have taken advantage to oppress their employees.
Am writing to expose the evils meted to us as cashiers of the said branch am not sure of the situation in other branches. We are overworked on a regular basis not paid overtime except on December on specific days despite being overworked all year round.
This last Sunday (02-02-2020) is a good example of cases of extreme case of slavery imagine a cashier who reported at work at 8:30 a.m. was leaving at 8:00 p.m. the earliest. The worst thing is some cashiers are lactating mothers who have babies of less than 6 months, God have mercy on them.
You can imagine the fatigue we suffer on such days, note that the company contract states we should work for 7 hours a day however, due to poor implementation of labor laws our rights are flawed at will by management.
They normally give vague excuses that we had a lot of customers, clearly the company benefits we do not in any way, am not against putting extra hours but we should be compensated fairly for extra effort we put. It shameful a company of stature of Carrefour to mistreats its employees. Maybe because we are blacks that why they take advantage to mistreat us as they please this is despite the Country’s Human Resource manage being Kenyan lady.
Cashiers who try to be vocal about the injustices meted on us they become “the enemy” of management and are targeted. The only thing the management is good at is reducing cashiers to beggars through scam they call round up your bill which is basically is asking customer to donate some cash towards charity they run, note if a cashier does not ask customer for this money they are threatened and sometime sanction. This is unfair since some of us were raised being told begging for money is unethical.
The bottom line is that Carrefour Kenya is not what it claims to be “Great Moments for Everyone Everyday”. At least we should be given time off to compensate for extra hours we put on busy days which should reflect automatically if they consider paying us overtime is expensive for them every Kenyan deserve to be treated fairly not withstanding their background and status in society. The fatigue we suffer in our line of duty is detrimental to health sometimes we go home with back pains note they don’t provide us with medical cover and we are unable to access better health care given they pay us a salary which only we can survive on we sacrifice a lot of things given the hard economic times.
The persons in charge of the department (assistant manager) operate with a lot of impunity very rude and sometimes unapproachable our manager listens but does not take any action to better our situation. Expose these evils, also they shifted the closing hour to 10:00 p.m. from 9:30 p.m. still required to report the same time as we used to before without any form of compensation. Clearly this company has zero welfare for its own employees in Kenya we treated differently compared to other employees in other countries where the company operates.
Enough is enough we can’t be forced to donate our time to a company that makes huge sales on daily basis please advocate for our justice.
#ifikiewakenya, #ifikieministryoflabor from a concerned employ