Mozambique: Workers Riot At Tobacco Factory

Source from:  Maputo 11/18/2014

More than 500 workers of the tobacco processing company, Mozambique Leaf Tobacco (MLT), rioted on Friday on the premises of the company's factory in the western city of Tete, according to a report in the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique".

The police opened fire to disperse the workers, one of whom was injured and taken to hospital for treatment.

The riot erupted because the workers accuse the management of swindling them out of almost half their wages. They say they are receiving a basic wage of 3,300 meticais (106 US dollars) a month, instead of 6,500 meticais.

"On the true wage sheet we have a wage of 6,500 meticais, but on the false sheet the figure of 3,300 appears as the basic wage. When allowances are added, each worker receives 3,800 meticais a month", one of the workers told the paper.

Another said that when the workers signed their work contracts, they were not allowed to read them, but were just told "sign here".

The alleged discrepancy came to light when one of the workers had a dispute with his wife which ended up in court. The court ordered him to pay his wife a sum in excess of the monthly wage of 3,300 meticais.

When the worker protested that he could not pay this sum, the court said that there was no wage of 3,300 meticais in MLT. Court officials, the worker and his wife went to the MLT human resource department where they were told that the real monthly wage was 6,500 meticais.

When the rest of the work force found this out, there was an explosion of rage. "As you can understand, the company management has been tricking us", said one of the workers interviewed by the paper. "We are on strike to oblige them to pay us what is on the wage sheet, and not 3,300 meticais".

The Tete provincial director of labour, Olga Nassone, said she had been taken by surprise when she heard of the disturbances at the factory. She said the workers' behaviour was illegal because they had given the management no notice of their intention to strike, and their trade union knew nothing about the matter either

The MLT management was also taken aback. The company's director of institutional relations, Alfredo Chambule, claimed that MLT "has no problems" and what was needed now was just for the workers to return to their jobs. Enditem