Dear Christine,
I hope all is good with you. May the good Lord keep you in the best of health.
Christine, my concern has to do with a popular security guard business in this island. I have a very good friend who works with them.
By law here people are supposed to work eight hours a day and get overtime if they do more. Yet my friend works 12 hours (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) and he has to come home to go back to work for 11 a.m. to do the lunch relief.
Christine, at times the man is so tired that it’s difficult to wake him up to go back to work. This is not right.
I used to work for this firm and I would be on the job for 12 hours (9 a.m. to 9 p.m.), go to lunch at 12 and receive no break in between there at all. Sometimes my back would hurt so much that I used to go to the bathroom, pull the seat down and sit for at least ten minutes. It became so unbearable that I resigned.
The people in authority do not come out to see what’s going on. They have supervisors who are supposed to take up the slack if a guard is not available, but that never happens. Instead they take the supervisor’s word and that guard ends up without a job. Something needs to be done.
– Concerned Friend
Dear Concerned Friend,
The idea of having a security guard on duty is to have someone who can respond in the most effective manner to anything that threatens a business. To do this, he or she must not only be well-trained, but also very alert. If a guard has to work for so many hours, it is unlikely that he or she will be capable of responding to any threat at their optimum energy.
It is therefore folly for any security company to push people to work these long hours, especially if they must stand for much of that period.
I recognise that jobs are hard to come by these days, so people may prefer not to protest even if they think they are being taken advantage of. But clearly this is a matter that should be taken up with the Labour Department so that their officers can investigate this matter and do something about it.
My other concern is the health of security guards who have to stand for such long periods. If your friend is overweight, he should work on this immediately as this is a well known contributing factor for foot pain and lower back pains. So too is poor posture and improper footwear.
But the real problem here is the long hours of work. Spending that amount of time on your feet everyday can wear the fittest person down. Your friend needs to be mindful of these things. I hope this helps.
– Christine