Frabelle employees demand more pay

By FRANK RAI
MORE than 2,000 employees from Frabelle (PNG) Limited ‘stood down’ from their jobs yesterday presented their underpaid grievances to the company.
The employees, who fronted up at the main entrance and blocking senior management staff from entering the offices and the cannery at Milfordhaven Road, Lae, claimed that they had been paid an 85t hourly rate since the company started operations in 2006.
Employees from all the sections, including warehouse, production, fish mill, engineering, maintenance, sanitation, printing, net making and fishing stood down from their jobs demanding a pay rise on the next pay day.
They told the management that they wanted a pay rise to K2.50 an hour or they would continue to stay off from work.
They claimed that the current 85t rate was fixed across the board for all employees regardless of the department they worked in.
They also claimed that safety regulations were not in place leaving employees prone to health risks at work.
They added that risk allowances and others should also be included in the pay rise.
A team of local Papua New Guineans from the human resource department who were outside the main entrance to address the frustrated employees were shouted down when they told them to return to work while awaiting a decision from the parent company in The Philippines.
Frabelle (PNG) Limited managing director Nestor Defensor and its operations manager Jun Mariano declined to comment.
Pay slips showed that some of the employees were taking home K45 every fortnight.
While responding to the stand off, an officer at the Labour and Employment Office in Lae said the amended minimum wage rate was 89t per hour.
He said if the company was paying 85t an hour, then it should back date all the payments to the amended rate because it was a breach of the MoA signed between the PNG Trade Union Congress and Employers’ Federation of PNG.
“They were underpaid; that means all the employees should be back paid from the time they started work with the company,” the officer said.
It was understood that the MoA of November 2003 declared that a new interim national minimum wage be at rate of 89t and hour for a 42-hour week.