Will new regulations help or worsen the working conditions of security guards?
Nawaal Deane
Lionel Sheperd* starts work at six in the evening, six days a week, and finishes 12 hours later. A security guard in a shop in a Johannesburg suburb, he observes the customers and keeps an eye out for firearms. There is a chair to sit on but most of the time he stands at the entrance.
In an emergency he can alert police by pressing a panic button, which is hidden from the casual observer. But his life is constantly in danger because he cannot afford a gun and his employer does not supply him with one.
His salary is R1 200 a month.
New regulations in terms of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act are not likely to alleviate his working conditions, and there are fears that the new wage guidelines may actually lower the wages earned by Sheperd and his colleagues – the badly paid corps of uniformed security guards one finds guarding factories and shops, houses and schools, especially in the cities.
That is the view of a supervisor for Gray Security, who believes the new regulations will further impoverish workers, especially the provision limiting the hours they can work.
“If our hours are reduced we will make less money because the rates will remain the same,” he said.
Moffat Ndlovu, national organiser for the National Security and Armed Qualified Union, also fears that the new legislation will reduce wages by decreasing the hours.
“We are extremely dissatisfied with the new [regulations] and understand the need for reducing the hours to create jobs, but the reduction of wages is unacceptable,” Ndlovu said.
He believes that all parties – the Department of Labour, registered security companies and unions – should return to negotiations and re-evaluate this situation to the benefit of all.
And when they do, “it would be far better to drop the hours and increase the hourly rate”, said Ndlovu. “We are not making ends meet working 12 hours. Working for eight hours will just make our situation worse.”
It is difficult to see how much worse it can be. As a rule, security guards receive no medical aid or any other benefits. They are required to pay their employer for their uniforms, their meals, their training at the Security Board Academy (firearms training costs about R100) and, often, their transport. With so many expenses, many guards are exploited by their employers and vulnerable to loan shark schemes.
John Pieter* is a security guard who was deeply in debt to a former employer. “I could not support my family on R1 200 a month, so I borrowed money from the company. But they are loan sharks,” he complained. “They lend guards money on a pansela scheme, which means someone does you a favour.”
The interest rate is 25% and at the end of the month the whole amount, including the interest, is deducted from their salaries. The minimum the guards are allowed to borrow is R200. A guard who borrows R1 000 from his employers will have R1 250 deducted from his salary at the end of that month, leaving him still in debt to the company. If he works overtime, he can pay the R50 back.
Many guards borrow money and get caught up in a vicious cycle where they are continuously in debt, said Pieter. Each month their salary is deducted in full and they are forced to borrow more money.
“It is illegal to deduct money from salaries without the employee’s consent,” said Virgil Seafield, deputy director of the employment conditions commission in the Department of Labour. “Money can only be deducted according to a percentage set out by the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.”
As for the paltry salaries, “the remuneration rate set out by the Basic Conditions of Employment Act can be negotiated between the employers and the unions. There has been a misrepresentation that the rate of R5,22 is the maximum one, but in fact it is the minimum rate that a security guard can obtain. Therefore it can be increased by the industry,” said Seafield.
Guards are paid according to their grade qualifications. The grading system, A to E, works on the basis of the type of training the security guard has and will specify the amount of money he will receive.
“Sometimes I would have to work a double shift of 24 hours with no extra pay,” Pieter said. “My employers would contract security guards to clients for a fee of R3 750 per month. Of that money, the security guard receives R1 204 while the rest of the money goes to the company.”
Guards do not have any basic comforts such as coffee, heaters or toilet facilities on site. “There are guys who sit in the cold and rain with no shelter for 12 hours; there are no guard-houses, just a chair,” Pieter said. When it rains they must find shelter while still protecting the premises.
The company takes on contracts with no consideration for the basic needs of the guards. They do not provide raincoats as part of the uniform nor do they pay for the uniform – and security guards are sure the companies make a profit out of that as well.
“They buy the uniforms at cost,” said one guard. “If the pants are R40, they charge us R80 and it gets deducted off our salary.”
There will not be much help coming from the Security Officers’ Board, which said it has no mandate to influence the conditions set out in the Act.
“According to our Code of Conduct (Section 5,4), we are a regulatory body which enforces statutory and common law applicable to employment in the private security industry,” said Patrick Ronan, registrar for the Security Officers’ Interim Board. “Therefore we just enforce the [law].”
* Names have been changed