Fishy business. The Social Impact of SST.pdf - Act Now!

The Filipinos occupy all the middle management positions in the company like the ProductionManger, the Engineering Manger, Quality Assurance,FCF is one of the shareholders of SST. SST is only a processing plant and fish are caught fromall over the Pacific and foreign waters and sold to the factory. The factory buys them andprocesses them here and exports them to their markets overseas. Their major markets are inCalifornia and Los Angles. Friable (spelling?) is the name of the Filippino owned fishingvessels contracted by SST to catch fish for them.Helen: SST was exporting yellow fin tuna to Italy because this is the type of fish they prefer tobuy.. However, it was lifted a while ago because their quality control detected something oursdidn’t. They stopped buying fish from SST. So our market is only to export to US now.Work-place safety is a major concern and priority for all factory and plant of any kind. The waywe operate at SST does not to me imply that the factory is concerned after their employees.Employees are issued gumboots, helmets, gowns and gloves. Not all employees have the luxuryof safety gears. We already had three cases of major injuries, where one man lost his toes whenthe door landed on them.. Another had a leg injury, and another man had a serious eye injuryfrom ammonia gas leakage. Ammonia is used for freezing the fish and we have leakage all thetime. We are not told how harmful this gas is but it leaks every time. Even you go inside thefreezer which is below -15 degree Celsius you’ll be frozen if you are in there for 5 minutes, andyet some of the employees working in the freezer don’t have the right equipment,.I didn’t hear if there was any compensation paid to those who got injured. On of the boys whoinjured himself is the son of the Labour Officer here in Wewak. To our knowledge nocompensation was made to the victims. 4Pregnant mothers who are more than 4 months along are asked to leave the company. If theywant to come back after having their baby they will have to reapply, and if accepted they willcome and resume. There is no such thing as maternity leave or what ever. They just terminateyou from work which means you don’t get any bonus or other incentives. That’s for theemployees of the lower level, but does not apply to the administrative and supervisory staff.They enjoy other privileges and benefits such as maternity leave.One thing they refuse to accept is the fact they all the hard work is done by people on theground directly working alone the factory line whilst they sit down and shout instructions andget paid more than the poor one of the ground.Edward: Most of the women working in the factory are over 15 years old. They also try toavoid older women. Most employees are in their 20s and 30s – physical fitness is an obviouscondition of employment --that you have to be fit to perform any function on the job.When we had Mr Andrew Wanyia as Manger Personnel he was very critical on such employeematters such as harassment, pay differences, transportation and other workplace safety mattersfor the employees. Now that he is gone we feel a big loss for our voice at the senioradministrative level. I don’t know the reason behind his departure but we were told that thecompany made his position redundant. His loss is equally felt in the company by all the nationalemployees.4 The Labour Officer is said to eat regularly at the Windjammer, suggesting that he is not troubled by theincident enough to boycott SBA/ESPG properties.144