Horrible violations at this new shopping complex

Jan 28, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I am writing this letter on behalf of myself and my colleagues who are currently employed at new shopping complex that is people say is admirable but there is also another side to this large outfit.  Both full time and part time employees are being exploited.
In my letter I am stating some brief points to bring to your attention and please advised on same.
1. There is no pay for overtime work. The Supervisor for cashiers will state that you are getting pay for your overtime work but when the salary is queried, the accounts department is saying that the payroll is not set up to pay overtime and no one would look into the matter.
2. NIS and GRA deductions are deducted from the salary. It is paid every fortnightly but when contacted, both agencies assert  the monies for the deductions are not paid over to them. GRA deductions are $7,200. But what I understand, tax can only be deducted if your take-home salary is $50,000 due to the threshold.
3. Lunch is one hour and you need an exit pass before you leave the building and a supervisor has to approve your lunch and you have to go through security check.  A shopping pass is also needed if you want to shop any item; even one item and in order to get any of these passes, you have to go all the way to the receptionist which is located downstairs of the building; all the way to the back of the office and then back upstairs for it to be approved and to searched by security also.
4. 15 minutes break is entitled to staff but supervisors hardly ever approve that because they claim that there is always a line of costumers. Even if a staff is not feeling well or need to buy water because there is no water provided for staff (cashiers) and we are told blatantly to either walk with water or work thirsty all day
5. The locker room to place all your valuable is located a very far distance. When going to uplift your bag during lunch hour it takes you 15 minutes to get to the room and the room is not safe to store your belongings because persons break into the lockers and steal your money and phones and the securities do not do anything to help. There is a sign stating “they are not responsible for any loss” but then again, we are not allowed to keep monies or phones when working, especially cashiers.
6. The working hours are 9am to 9pm on weekdays and 10am to 9:30pm on Saturdays and 11am to 9:30pm on Sundays. But the cashiers always have to work overtime because the store does not close on time because of customers still being present in the store and at the end of the evening we have to balance off our work and two different sets of supervisors have to sign off on that also. We also have to clean our surroundings and pack back every item left behind by customers on the respective shelves, with all that being said, cashiers leave at midnight and we are not paid for that. There is no transportation provided when we leave at those hours and we are not able to access transportation either.
7. Salary always have to be queried it is never calculated on the right hours.
8. This new large entity tends to fire their staff for no apparent reasons, simply because they do not want to pay overtime work so they replace you. And if you refused to work overtime hours, they would suspend you and give you a termination letter.
9. The new cashier system that was implemented is very slow and freezes whereby customers do not receive a bill for their purchase. While dealing with a customer and the system malfunctions, we have to do over a new bill and that is by scanning over all items. Cashiers were told that nothing can be done to deal with this but we must be able to deal with it by apologizing to customers and write bills for their purchase.
10. They are expired products placed at the cashiers’ register and we are responsible to sell the products at a certain time, even though it is already expired.
11. Cashiers must memorize all barcodes and prices on items so when the system is not working, we must be able to write bills with the correct price. There is also a seven-step script that cashiers must quote in the order to all customers or else they will be given a warning letter.
12. Prices are always incorrect either on the product or the system. Customers would blame the cashiers for that and the supervisors do not do anything to address the matter. If a customer is overcharged, the cashier would have to pay back the difference even though it is not their fault. The department responsible for pricing items and entering it in the system is Data Entry. At one time, there was a Black Friday Sale and there were a lot of items on sale but it was not in the system that day to cash. When customers came to the register to cash out, there was no price in the system. It was very embarrassing and everything was out of order and the customers began to blame the cashiers for not being effective and that was a matter for the Data Entry Department.
Exploited employee (name supplied)

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