The Compass – The General Union of Workers in Public Services, Free Professions, Communications and Information Technology called for intensifying monitoring and inspection campaigns, raising their efficiency and expanding their scope of work, to control widespread labor violations in security and protection companies, to put an end to the legal abuses that workers are exposed to.

The head of the union, Khaled Abu Marjoub, said in a statement on Sunday that labor violations continue in security and protection companies, and take various forms in terms of the work environment and conditions, especially non-compliance with the minimum wage, participation in social security, long working hours, payment of overtime allowance, and deprivation of workers of their right to annual or sick leave in addition to official holidays and weekly holidays.

He pointed out that the absence of documented employment contracts, payroll statements or time sheets makes circumvention and abuse of the rights of security and protection workers easier, and the process of detecting it is more difficult by the Ministry of Labor.

He called on the Ministry of Labor to raise the efficiency of inspection of security and protection companies, develop the methods used, and not only ask workers about their conditions, but rather return to work contracts, time sheets, salaries and records.

He pointed out that workers are the weaker party and may respond to companies’ pressures so as not to lose the opportunity to work in light of the current economic conditions.

And he stressed that the agreements signed by security and protection companies with the establishments with the aim of providing their services to them, include the value of the wage that will be paid to the worker, but what is paid to him is less than what was agreed upon between the two parties, describing this as “encroaching on workers’ rights and manipulating their wages at the expense of increasing corporate revenues.”

He added that the absence of an umbrella (union, association) representing companies operating in the sector is one of the most prominent challenges facing the work of the union, which prevents the signing of a collective contract at a sectoral level, which applies to all security and protection workers in the Kingdom, and would protect their rights and ensure that they are not violated.

And Abu Marjoub indicated that the union signed collective contracts, but at the level of companies, as it includes the employees of the company that was signed with.