Water meter readers push back against introduction of target-based contracts

Water meter readers and bill collectors in the Qaliyubiya governorate were informed by mail at the beginning of June that come July their old temporary contracts would end. Instead, the Qalyubiya Drinking Water and Sanitation Company told them they should sign a new type of contract that would make their work even more precarious. If they didn’t sign, the work relationship would be terminated, ten sources from different branches of the company across the governorate relayed to Mada Masr. A source from the equivalent Cairo company’s administration confirmed that the new contracting system had already been rolled out for water meter readers and bill collectors in the capital a long time ago. Contracts for water meter readers and bill collectors have been the basis of tensions simmering between company management and the workers over the past two years. Workers have organized several demonstrations to demand that the company issue them with permanent contracts instead of the temporary ones that the meter readers have worked under for long periods — as much as eight years for some. A number of workers from Qalyubiya, including from Qanater al-Khairiya, confirmed to Mada Masr that they have refused to sign the new contracts, which they say is another form of temporary contracts with unfair clauses that could allow for their dismissal at any time. They stressed that their primary demand is permanent employment, after years of work. These workers are holding out for this demand even after a protest among collectors at the Qanater branch earlier in June ended with negotiations in which worker representatives agreed to sign the new contracts, as one representative told Mada Masr at the time. Since the protest, workers refusing to sign the new contracts have been cut off. Branch management has stopped uploading customer data to the collection devices of several of the collectors who had refused to sign the new contract, according to a source among the branch’s employees. Those collectors are unable to work as a result. In a bid to convince the abstainers, the Personnel Affairs Department in Qalyubiya’s Kafr Shukr region held a meeting with 20 collectors on Sunday this week. But still, they insist they will not sign. “I’m not going to sign away eight years of my hard work in the streets,” one collector who attended the meeting told Mada Masr. New contracts introduce targets Several clauses in the new contract have caused concern among the collectors, according to sources. Whereas the duration of the previous contracts was only one year, the new contracts are even more precarious. Clause 4 of the new contract stipulates that the contract duration will be directly tied to the collector’s collection rate. This rate is to be determined by how many bills the collector redeems in comparison to the value of invoices during their first three months of work after the contract comes into effect, according to a copy of the contract which Mada Masr reviewed. “The contract will be 12 months long if the collector achieves a collection rate of no less than 90 percent of the value of invoices submitted to him,” the same clause states. If the collection rate falls to 80 percent, the contract duration will be reduced to six months; below this, the contract will end after three months. Is this lawful? Lawyers specializing in worker protection differed in their view of whether the clauses are illegal following the introduction of Egypt’s new labor law at the end of last year. Three lawyers consulted by Mada Masr all agreed that failure to meet performance metrics is not considered permissible grounds for termination of contract, as per Article 148. “It is not legally permissible to include a condition that grants the employer the right to terminate a fixed-term contract — for example, a one-year contract — without a legitimate reason or compensation,” said Mahmoud Abdel Rahim, a lawyer at the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights. As such, the three-month and six-month contract durations represent a potentially unlawful area. Lawyer Yasser Saad agreed. He explained that if the first three months where the rate is calculated are considered a probation period, “it is not permissible” after that point “to set the contract duration at six months, on the basis of the collector achieving a certain percentage of invoices.” “Starting from the fourth month, the company cannot simply dismiss him,” said Saad, pointing to Article 90 of the Labor Law, which prohibits the appointment of the same worker on probationary conditions more than once with the same employer. Saad also pointed to Clause 14 of the new contract as unlawful, since it grants the administration the right to terminate the worker “without the need for warning or taking legal or judicial measures,” if the worker breaches his contractual obligations or fails to carry out the work assigned to him. This applies without the right of the employee to object or “claim any compensation.” Both Saad and Abdel Rahim both say this violates Article 148 of the Labor Law. By contrast, Samuel Tharwat, a lawyer from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, believes that while the clause represents a blatant violation of workers’ rights, it is “unfortunately” consistent with the Labor Law’s stipulations for project-based work. He told Mada Masr that the new law permits “the conclusion of an employment contract for the completion of a specific task to be carried out within a specified period of time.” Abdel Rahim, however, argues that collectors’ and meter readers’ work can’t be defined as project-based. He argued that collecting invoices and reading meters is extended work and has been practiced by some of the current collectors and meter readers for years. A union source who spoke to Mada Masr previously said the same, pointing out that the work of collecting is part of the water company’s core business and not a temporary project. Article 1 of the Labor Law defines project-based work as “that which, by its nature, forms part of the employer’s normal activities but its completion requires a defined period of time, or which pertains to a particular task and ends upon its completion.” The post Water meter readers push back against introduction of target-based contracts first appeared on Mada Masr .