Security check

WE see them everywhere we go. They’re standing at the front of the banks telling us which line to join. They’re checking our temperatures before we enter the supermarkets. They’re shouting out the ticket numbers at the tax office and operating the buzzers at our office gate right now. They are security guards. Many of them are enduring terrible working conditions, and many of them are women.

Take Miss D, for example. She has been working with a security firm in Kingston for over ten years. She works 12 hours per day, five days per week. During each of those 12 hours, she gets just 30 minutes for lunch. Although on paper it says she is working regular hours, eight hours per day and four hours overtime, she does not receive overtime pay.

“When you are just starting out now the pay is less than $250 per hour,” said Miss D, whose name and the others in this story have been changed to protect their privacy. “But now I make a little under $300 per hour. There are no benefits or anything like that. No insurance. Nothing. If you get sick you don’t get paid. If you take leave you don’t get paid.”

But Miss D is grateful because these conditions are much better than those under which she worked with another company.

“I was located at a [fast food restaurant] before I came to this company, and I had to leave,” she said exasperatedly. “Those shifts were 15 hours at a time… standing at the door. At least here I have a guard room and somewhere to sit.”

She said those gruelling conditions took a severe toll on her health, that became more pronounced as she got older.

“I still feel it in my legs and my lower back,” she said. “It was very uncomfortable. I couldn’t do it anymore. And people look down on security guards. They don’t see us as real people, so they just treat us any and any way.”

Miss D is far from alone. Private security is one of the most rapidly growing industries in Jamaica, with over 300 registered companies currently on record. Over 20,000 Jamaicans are employed as security guards, with many more, such as Miss D, being hired as fixed-term contractors, making them ineligible for employee benefits. About 30 per cent of them are women.

Every day was unbearable

Shanique, an unarmed guard working with another security company, spends her days standing at the front of a small financial institution in Half-Way-Tree. She shared that this is her second company, after having to leave her last job when she became pregnant.

“I couldn’t stand all day with the belly, even though it wasn’t showing yet or anything. I felt too heavy,” she said. “And I kept having bad feelings and so on, so it was really stressful.”

She added that the constant flow of ill-tempered customers made everyday even more unbearable.

“It wasn’t so bad before COVID-19, because at least the people used to come in the bank and stand up in the AC. They weren’t so bad to deal with. But since they have to stand outside, and we start having to make sure they are wearing masks, sanitising and keeping distance, it is hell, because you know how some people ‘dark’ already. Plus when them standing up for hours them get mad and start cuss the security, like they don’t see that I’m out there standing with them too. My foot dem a hurt me too.”

Shanique has to leave her two children with her elderly mother in the days while she goes to work, as she cannot afford childcare. She says on average she takes home about $25,000 per fortnight — just enough to buy some food and pay her fare to get to work again for another two weeks. Like Miss D, she has no benefits or paid leave. What she has instead is $1,500 deducted from each payslip for uniforms which are provided by the company.

‘She wouldn’t let me store my lunch in the fridge’

It was at a church-run private school that Betty said she had her worst experience, ever, as a security guard.

“The principal would complain if I sat down. She wouldn’t let me store my lunch in the fridge, as she said it was for staff only, and my food that I brought from home would sometimes spoil by lunch time. If she saw me resting my feet, she would quarrel. I had to bring boxes of goods into the kitchen for the canteen staff, monitor kids on the playground, wash the principal’s car, unclog toilets when the children would mess them up, and other demeaning work that had nothing to do with providing security. Yet she treated me like a dog — like I was not good enough to share space with.”

She said when she got pregnant, things got worse, and the pregnancy also ended her contract with that security company.

“The principal realised that I was sick, as I needed to sit more, and asked me outright if I was pregnant. Mind you, I’m a married woman. She exclaimed that I was foolish, and reported to the boss that I was unable to carry out my duties. I was sent on leave, and the company did not take me back.”

Betty, who at that time was in her third year with the company, now sees the dismissal as a blessing in disguise, because after having her baby, she secured a spot with another firm, in a banking institution.

“I get $400 per hour, uniforms, air conditioning, two weeks paid maternity leave, and paid sick leave,” she said. “So some security companies are more conscientious than others.”

‘Just treat us like humans’

When Georgette got posted in a gated complex in Kingston, she thought she had hit the jackpot, having last worked guarding a warehouse in Spanish Town. But little did she know that the treatment from the residents would be so inhumane, that she was left questioning her worth.

“One time one of the residents was walking her dog, and the dog pooped right at the guardhouse door, and she looked at me and asked me to pick it up,” she shared.

“Then there were constant complaints to my boss — they said they didn’t feel safe because I was a woman, they said my uniform was washed out, and once I made the mistake of hi-fiving a kid who attempted to greet me, and his mother told me not to touch her child. I wanted to tell her to just treat us like humans.”

She continued: “But the most dehumanising thing was having to work Christmas — nobody remembered I was there, and everybody did their family thing, while I sat in the guard house, alone. I was doing a 24-hour shift and at one point I even ran out of drinking water. I was also on my period and went to use the bathroom, and a resident arrived at the gate and sat on his horn, because I was taking too long to come out to open it. To make matters worse, when I opened the gate his wife told him to stop the car, proceeded to open a container of food she had in the car — obviously to take for her dog — smelled it to see if it was going bad, then offered it to me. When I looked in it, it was just scraps. To them, I deserved what the dog got.“

What recourse available?

Private security firms label guards as independent contractors and not employees, so they are not legally entitled to benefits such as paid sick, maternity or vacation leave. While many security guards would want to keep the status of independent contractors, so their work hours aren’t restricted, it’s the social welfare issues that they want addressed.

Security guards can work up to 12-hour days, seven days per week. And with some guards working as little as $200 per hour, double shifts and long workdays are the only ways they can support their families.

Recourse available to the guards is through the Ministry of Labour, which takes action against security companies that are underpaying security guards and who breach labour laws, like not paying overtime and holiday rates.

And successive administrations have promised to work on ensuring protection for guards, who though they may be termed contractors, still deserve to have some basic welfare rights, as obtains for employees in modern-day organisations.