EDL Contract Employees Protest Recent Company Measures

Contract employees at Electricite du Liban protested on Thursday recent measures taken by the company against them, reported the National News Agency.

They were protesting their designation by the company as “temporary employees.”

The workers consequently blocked with burning tires and garbage dumpsters the road facing the company's headquarters at Mar Mikhael in Beirut.

EDL refuted the employees' claims, explaining that employment contracts they had signed with the contracting company had expired on Wednesday.

EDL consequently demanded that the workers return their timecards, adding that it is awaiting that a new contract be drafted with a contracting company.

Necessary measures were taken with the contract employees “in a manner that would maintain work at the company and its funds so that no worker would earn a salary without having been to work,” it explained.

On Monday, the workers briefly blocked the road near the company's headquarters during a protest they held over an urgent draft-law on their full-time employment.

They urged President Michel Suleiman and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati to give them the right to become full-time employees.

The contract workers have been waging weekly protests since the urgent draft-law was put on the agenda of a parliamentary session along with 44 other articles.

But the legislature has so far failed to convene over the boycott of caretaker Premier Najib Miqati and several parliamentary blocs.

The draft-law has been proposed by Change and Reform bloc MP Ibrahim Kanaan, which the workers argue contradicts the agreement reached with Miqati's government when they lifted a 95-day sit-in last year.

The protesters said they were duped by Amal MP Ali Bazzi and Hizbullah lawmaker Ali Ammar, who they said collaborated with Kanaan in contradicting the six-point deal which ended their sit-in in August 2012.