15/07/2024
Publication: CWAO
Author: Thobile
I started to work at Nature's Garden in 2018. I was younger by that time and I was happy that I found a job.
But as time passed, things changed. I was a permanent casual and it wasn't nice. The bosses treated us differently to permanent workers even though we were doing the same job. We had to carry our IDs in order to get a uniform every day.
There are many people who get hired by that company and the worst part is that they hire even old people so that they push their work.
I had to continue working there because I was a breadwinner to my family. One day I was robbed by three young men on my way to work. Luckily they didn’t rape me. We used to wake up very early in the morning to go to Nature’s Garden in order to be pointed out (called for work). Women were suffering the most because the work was not stable. The sad story was that if you were not pointed at for work, you had to come back at night to try and get a night shift. Also, labour broker workers were not allowed to attend the clinic on site. So many bad things were happening that we reported our issues to the Simunye Workers Forum. At that time we were working for a labour broker called Phakisa. We decided to demonstrate at Nature’s Garden so that they could hear our demands but they didn’t take our demands seriously because we are labour broker workers.
They dismissed 21 of us, all women workers
