Electricite du Liban contract workers Thursday closed the company’s Beirut headquarters and several south Lebanon branches to customers in a protest aimed at pressuring the government to make them full-time employees.
The state-run National News Agency reported that the workers in Beirut later opened the main gate to the company's employees but continued to block access to the customer service gate.
NNA said that negotiations took place between Internal Security Forces and the workers to reach a deal on opening the company to customers.
Meanwhile, EDL workers from the Sidon, Tyre and Deir Zahrani branches in the south also staged sit-ins demonstrating against the company’s decision a day earlier to hire more contract workers instead of giving the existing temporary employees full-time status.
“We were surprised by their decision to hire 200 new contract workers, other than the old workers that they still haven’t found a solution for,” EDL contract worker in Sidon, Rabih al-Sayegh told The Daily Star.
In August, EDL extended its contract with service providers by four months, an extension that the contract workers have rejected.
Since 2012, contract workers have been employed by private service providers KVA, BUS and NEU, companies brought on board to carry out EDL services.
Both sides reached a deal in 2012, when the government promised to hire workers if they passed an entrance exam. But after 140 contract workers passed, none were hired.
According to the terms of the agreement, those who passed the tests should be reclassified as permanent employees with full company benefits.
“We have taken exams, and we have passed. They told us that we don’t have a place in the company. And despite all this, they decided to hire new people. Some people are still waiting to be examined, but they don’t want to test them,” Sayegh added.
The workers have staged a number of strikes and sit-ins in recent years to protest what they view as unjust treatment.
EDL counts heavily on contract workers to carry out maintenance work and collect electricity bills.
The government has put a freeze on the hiring of new staff in a bid to reduce spending in public departments. But experts warn that the government will eventually be forced to replace the aging staff at EDL.
