PAFCO Employees Might Receive First Pay Rise In 20 Yearsff

Close to 700 employees of the Pacific Fishing Company Limited at Levuka, Fiji will have their first pay rise in 20 years - soon. This follows a nine-page award by ad hoc arbitrator Gyaneshwar Lala when he found a dispute between PAFCO employees union and PAFCO for a wage increase “justifiable, reasonable and lawful”. As part of his award Mr Lala said there must be a wage increase to $2.75 per hour for unskilled workers and $3.50 per hour for skilled workers. “There will be an increase of all allowances from $1.50 to $4 per shift and equal wages for both men and women employees,” he said. The wages would be reviewed every two years and the increase be backdated to January 1, 2003. However, it is still unclear whether PAFCO will accept the award. PAFCO Employees Union secretary Tomasi Tokalauavere talks to Josephine Prasad of the Fijian Daily Post .

DAILY POST: Why was the dispute filed?

TOKLAUVERE: The cannery workers had not received any wage increase and Cost of Living Adjustment since the late 60s under the Japanese administration. They were getting about $70 per week. Should they perform overtime work then they pick up about $100 per week.

However, after the State took over PAFCO and 30 years down the track, the company, under its new chief executive officer, Mitieli Baleivanualala, was still paying the same wage rate.

PAFCO was fast deteriorating into an industrial cesspool under atrocious working conditions with succeeding governments watching from afar with cold indifference.

In the interim, COLA was (and still is) spiralling upwards, and the workers were struggling to make ends meet.

They were in dire financial straits, shoved into unending nightmare and facing a bottomless pit.

Women were worst hit by the slave labour. As responsible mothers and sole breadwinners for the family, they were forced to borrow heavily from money lending sharks, unsecured loans from the banks, from PAFCO’s credit union, and from the welfare store.

If that is not bad enough, the workers owed a substantial sum to their local grocery stores, to the merchants, taxi owners, truck drivers, in unpaid school fees, overdue hire purchase assets, accumulated church tithes, unpaid provincial council tax, vanua obligations and owed literally everyone else under this godforsaken country.

The workers have gone past the “Borrow from Peter to pay Paul” syndrome. Basically, they are staring at the wrong end of the barrel of a gun.

All of the above with a mere $70 per week in hand!

Without any shadow of doubt Mitieli is a slave driver sitting in his air-conditioned office with approximately $100,000 pay packet annually compared to the meagre $4000 odd for the workers who is the backbone of the company.

No wonder UNDP classified it as living under the poverty line. Economist and USP Senior Lecturer Sunil Kumar had said in his report on PAFCO, “This is outrageous”. He further said, “No responsible business entity can ever inflict such an injustice to its workers”.

Catholic priest Father Kevin Barr and a respected social worker, said in his recent study adopted by the Labour Advisory Board that $120-$130 should be the minimum wage per week to be on par with the poverty line.

Additionally, reputed researcher Senator Dr Atu Emberson-Bain spoke out against the atrocities committed against PAFCO workers. Her 1995 research paper and her video production reveals more than a can of worms at PAFCO.

In a nutshell, the workers were basically working in a draconian, squalid and dreary conditions as Mr Baleivanualala and the State stood and watched.

Calls from the workers for a wage increase for a better living and working conditions fell on deaf ears.

However, with the GP Lala Award, last month, unskilled workers were awarded $2.75 cents per hour that should have brought their weekly pay to around $112, backdated to January, this year.

This is still considered to be under the poverty line, to be reviewed every two years. Despite the shortfall, the workers are determined to begin afresh and rebuild their lives around the $2.75 cents per hour until the next round of pay claim.

But their hopes have been dashed and dreams for a better living condition for themselves and money to pay education for their children was shattered with the media quoting Mitieli that he will appeal against the GP Lala Award.

Knowing Mitieli all these years, his bid to appeal GP Lala’s Award was not at all surprising, considering that he takes immense pleasure in subduing the workers, which can be coined as sadistic. This can be substantiated by his past actions.

For instance, Mitieli sacked 57 workers in 1996 just because they went on lunch break at 12 noon as was the past practice. He calls it absenteeism. The matter was duly reported as unreasonable, unfair and unlawful. The then Arbitrator, Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, ruled in favour of the workers. But he refused to honour the Award 40 of 1996.

Again, in 1997, he sacked an additional 59 workers for not counting the number of fish bones from processed tuna. I mean this has gone beyond of being bizarre. How in heavens name can anyone be counting fish bones in a fast assembly line and at the same time de-skinning tuna?

It’s diabolical to say the least. In any event, the Disputes Committee constituted under the Trade Disputes Act (April 3rd, 1997) ruled in favour of the workers and re-instated the. Yes, you guessed it.

Mitieli refused to have them back.

In 1999, when I took over the union, the committee did its level best to reason with Mitieli. But talking to person like Mitieli is like talking to a brick wall.

The union had no alternative but to sue PAFCO for $1.6 million and enforce the Arbitration Awards in the Suva High Court. Judge John Byrne agreed with the union and on January 25, 2002 ruled that the workers be re-instated, be paid all the monies due and awarded costs.

And now, for the too familiar cliché, Mitieli has appealed Judge John Byrne’s decision and the matter is in the Court of Appeal. When will it finally heard is anybody’s guess.

In another case, Mitieli sacked 26 55-year-old workers for their age in 1996. The Tribunal awarded compensation but like always he refused to pay. The union had to spend thousands of dollars to force Mitieli to pay the workers.

DAILY POST: Mr Baleivanualala was quoted in a newspaper that you do not know what draconian actually means. What is your definition?

TOKALAUVERE: For crying out loud, the workplace at PAFCO is basically an industrial cesspool.

For instance, a supervisor gave birth to her child at the work place. The child later died.

Women on maternity leave were not paid the full benefits according to the Employment Act and the provisions in the Master Agreement.

Several have not been re-employed on completion of their respective maternity leave.

Women visiting the toilet have a pay cut. Would you believe that?

Another example? A primary school boy whose arm was severed in heavy machinery had his arm amputated.

Several women are suffering from varicose veins, a direct correlation from standing long hours in one spot without proper blood circulation.

Other women severely maimed at workplace have not been compensated.

PAFCO chooses to ignore its corporate responsibility. Men working in the fish manure mill have been retired early for clogged respiratory system contracted from the unhygienic stench.

Others have been seriously injured and not compensated.

Consider this case. A lone forklift operator working in the wee hours of the morning when the several steel bins with frozen fish crashed from several feet high and trapped him for hours under his own forklift. He was saved by chance not otherwise. He had broke his leg, suffered severe frostbite, skin burns from the battery acid and psychological scar for life.

He was hospitalised in the Levuka Hospital and then transferred to the Colonial memorial Hospital, in Suva, for several weeks. He was one of the lucky ones.

A sub-contractor was electrocuted in a fatal accident in the PAFCO complex.

PAFCO is not OHS compliant. Period. Several attempts by the union to set up an OHS committee have been sidelined by Mitieli. He has his own goons running the show, which is a serious violation of the Act.

Need I say more?

Finally, the workers decided that enough was enough and went on strike during the SVT regime. Government ministers swore black and blue to improve their pay and work conditions.

Nothing happened. A big fat zilch. Government went insofar as sending Mitieli to Europe on the understanding PAFCO would get a new CEO.

Alas, their worst nightmare returned to haunt them till today. Basically, government’s minister of propaganda was in cruise mode, and that is, fresh oats from the bull’s digestive system. Government may as well send Mitieli for a holiday in the Riviera rather the run around.

DAILY POST: What are the difficult you and your members face during the process of the log of claims and while the Arbitration process was on?

TOKALAUVERE: The long and short of it, the union reported a trade dispute in 2000 and it was finally heard in 2003. Ad Hoc Arbitrator GP Lala was appointed to preside over the matter.

However, in the process the union’s president, Abele Vasi, and I were arrested by the military and the police.

We were harassed by the police every so often even during our meetings.

We have been barred from entering the PAFCO complex.

I have been racially abuse by Jone Lako, the corporate manager in public through Fiji’s third newspaper, (Fiji Sun), which seems to be championing the atrocities at PAFCO.

Our arrest was through the instigation of one of PAFCO’s executive officer who is an army reserve in the Fiji Military Forces.

DAILY POST: So what is the best solution?

TOKALAUVERE: Sack Mitieli and hire some one competent, firm but human.

Fiji has lost millions of dollars through him. For instance, former Auditor-General Michael Jacobs said that he has not accounted for $5 million and no further money should be injected into PAFCO.