Senegalese workers in the hell of Chinese ceramics factory cry out

At this Chinese company, which has invested some 55 billion CFA francs to supply the Senegalese and West African markets with tiles, the workers denounce the violent and ruthless management style of their employers.

Workers are under constant pressure, working on day and night shifts, unbearable work rhythms with insufficient rest, frequent workplace accidents, miserable wages, under fixed-term contracts constantly renewed, etc.

This investigative report digs into the heart of a system that workers consider to be slave-like.

A finger cut off… 

September 25, 2021, around 8 a.m. Mor Talla, one of the workers lost a finger and two others shattered by the propeller of the machine he was working with. He was handling a block of tiles with his bare hands in the glazing department of the tile factory in Sindia (about 60 km from Dakar on the Petite côte). The company doctor refused to attend to him, as he did not have the necessary instruments. The worker spent three hours there, between the indifference of the Chinese and the unbearable pain he was in. The pressure on his group leader led him to push the Chinese around. At 11 a.m., he was finally taken to Mbour, where a nurse’s aide treated him “without anesthesia”. It took the intervention of a retired midwife for the main doctor to have a more qualified nurse take over the treatment. He says the experience left him traumatised. 

“Then I went home with some painkillers. I gathered the money I had left and what my family had given me to buy the prescribed medicines. Apart from the expenses paid by the Chinese in Mbour, I took care of myself with the help of my mother and close friends. I had to pay for the treatment I continued to receive, and I had to get to the health center. But 45 days later, I was still in pains, because the care hadn’t been done properly on the whole. Then I noticed huge cuts in my salary… For the Chinese, I apparently no longer existed…”.

 Workplace accidents and discrimination

At the end of his fixed-term contract, Mor Talla never returned to the factory to work. Dejected and angry. Disgusted, above all, by the indifference of his employers! He decided to quit. For him, it was a way of denouncing the multi-faceted violence against which his comrades still at work are facing.

“In the event of an accident in the factory, Senegalese workers are not properly looked after. What happened to our friend and comrade Mor Talla, others experience it quite often. It’s a reality at the Sindia plant. And anyone who becomes disabled in the course of his work is fired,” says Gorgui*, an in-house trade unionist, speaking on condition of anonymity. Not without denouncing the favours enjoyed by the Chinese and some of their Senegalese relatives. 

“If they suffer a work-related accident, they can benefit from more appropriate treatment”, adds our source.

On the outskirts of the Sindia factory, we meet an employee who claims to have been the victim of a work accident at the same time as a Chinese worker. He shows us a large scar on one part of his body at the request of one of his colleagues.   

“When the incident happened, the Chinese man was placed in a 4X4 and taken to a clinic in Dakar. His co-worker was left behind. It was his foreman who called a cab to take him to Mbour hospital. And it was the employee himself who took out his own money to pay for all his medical expenses,” reveals Gorgui in a dejected tone. 

To support their colleague, the workers have opened a “small makeshift support system” – in the words of the trade unionist – with various contributions.  

The Twyford Sindia workers, highly demand for safety but one accident follows another frequently.

In June 2024, one of them fell from the top of his workstation. His head hit the floor. “The Chinese were alerted and arrived on the scene. Their first concern was to find out whether our colleague had his seatbelt fastened at the time of the accident”, says an indignant employee.  

The unfortunate man, transferred to Mbour, ended up in Thiès, his condition having worsened. “The issue of the belt being fastened or not, is just for an excuse not to take responsibility of the accident victim,” suggests another worker. 

Gorgui and many other employees have to be discreet inside the company to avoid being noticed as unionists.

“The Chinese could sack us and it would be of no consequence to them,” the distraught worker says. 

Between April and May 2021, some thirty employees, including union members demonstrating for better working conditions, were taken to court by the management. Accused of vandalizing company property, they were charged by an examining magistrate and then released provisionally. They never set foot in the plant again. Today, their “successors” are committed to setting up a real union. 

 Health and safety committee 

One morning in April 2024. The noise in the factory is deafening. In some places, it’s hard to hear within ten meters. Thousands of cartons of  tiles stocked in a warehouse that looks twice the size of a soccer pitch. The labelled packages stand some six meters high and stretch as far as the eye can see. Yellow floor markings delineate the lanes used by Chinese-made off-road mobile machines. On each of them, a driver in a helmet and an agent in a fluorescent jacket form a pair. They review the stocks of tiles due to leave the site. Outside, a small group of labourers await orders to load a fleet of trucks awaiting departure. 

At lunchtime, the workers complain about the quality of the meals served and the discrimination introduced by company management. 

The Chinese have their own restaurant, which also caters for Senegalese executives we call “Black Chinese” because of their complicity with management. But for us, it’s like a cheap restaurant,” says Gorgui. He condemns the quality of the meals, as well as their cost to the workers. 

“We are charged 900 CFA francs for poor quality and insufficient quantity of food”, says Bachir, who takes the opportunity to raise another recurring problem. “Access to drinking water is regularly interrupted, which is unacceptable given the infernal heat in the factory and the long working hours.  

These various issues were brought to the attention of a labour inspector, who requested anonymity before providing his insight.   

“In every company, the law requires the installation of a well-equipped room or diner, with well-maintained toilets if there are at least 15 employees. And for 50 employees or more, an occupational health and safety committee must be set up.  

The task of this committee is to prevent accidents in the workplace by identifying anything considered dangerous to the safety of workers throughout the company’s workspace,” stresses the senior civil servant. 

After referring to Title 11 of the Labor Code, the inspector confides that he and some of his colleagues have to deal with “3 or 4 complaints from workers against their employers” everyday. And the Chinese are always on top of the list, he adds.   

Twyford – renamed Keda (Sn) Ceramics Company Limited – is a Chinese industrial company specializing in the manufacture of ceramic tiles. The factory was inaugurated in January 2020 by former Senegalese President Macky Sall, thanks to an investment of 35 billion CFA francs, according to senegal-export.com.  

Its daily production capacity is said to be around 55,000 square meters of tiles. Some of this is exported, in particular to the West African sub-region, by truck to Gambia, Mali, Mauritania and Guinea. Some of it is exported by air, thanks to the close proximity of the Baise Diagne International Airport (AIBD) in the neighbouring town of Diass. The remainder is expected to reduce Senegal’s tile imports, which stand at around 80,000 tonnes a year. 

Low wages and endless fixed-term contracts 

For those we spoke with for weeks through various channels, the manufacture of ceramic tiles – in its various stages – has become a daily hell. Exposed to gas and the defeaning noise of large machines, they have to withstand the physical and psychological constraints of assembly-line work. Some of them have to stand for twelve hours at a time in the factory’s various workshops. Under constant pressure from the Chinese or, more often, from their local agents. 

“At the end of each month, I’m convinced that my investment in this job isn’t being rewarded for what it’s worth. Every day, I see colleagues who spend a good part of their working hours with their legs crossed over their desks. They get paid more than I do, thanks to their affinity with internal decision-makers”, rants Bachir*.   

As we went undercover, we found that the Chinese are rarely seen in the factory’s huge walk-in area. They are secluded in their offices, some of which resemble converted containers, and only leave them to pass on instructions to certain employees.    

“When the incident happened, the Chinese man was placed in a 4×4 and taken to a clinic in Dakar. His co-worker was left behind. It was his foreman who called a cab to take him to Mbour hospital. And it was the employee himself who took out his own money to pay for all his medical expenses.”

Bachir is a worker in his thirties. With his depressing expression, his body language exudes resignation.     

“My satisfaction comes from trying to take care of my family with the little I have: food supplies, paying water and electricity bills, helping my parents. Waiting for the next paycheck… Savings? I don’t think about it because my salary level doesn’t allow me to do so anyway. I live from day to day, but God is great…”  

In an affirmative tone, another worker who belongs to the “unionist” group stresses that “in any case, 90% of the company’s employees don’t have 130,000 CFA francs”.  

For most workers, the basic monthly salary does not exceed 73 thousand CFA francs, according to several pay slips we saw. The workload is 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.  

“How can a State with the means and control services to let workers, Senegalese or foreign, work 12 hours a day with only one day off in the week, and receive such derisory wages?” He asks “The Chinese are slavers,” he adds, “and we get the impression that they have the backing to do whatever they want with their employees.  

If the pay is “miserable”, absenteeism is harshly punished, says Bachir. “The Chinese take 12,500 FCFA from us for each day we don’t work. They don’t even take into account the reason for absence, which can be death, illness, baptism, etc.”, he asserts. “If you’re absent three days in a row, they fire you”.  

Bachir has been on one fixed-term contract after another at Twyford since he was recruited. His main obsession remains the pay slip, which he brandishes to express the “misery” in which he says he lives. A stress he shares with dozens of other workers. Like Sidate*.  

He complains about the lack of concern shown by the Chinese for the safety of workers, who are faced with insufficient personal protective equipment. “And even if there is some, it proves unsuitable for the specific working conditions in certain departments.    

“The products we work with are toxic and dangerous to inhale. We can go for weeks without masks and gloves to protect us from the itching that can occur when we come into contact with these products. For the Chinese and their close Senegalese collaborators, we just have to be an efficient workforce. They insist that we submit to their demands.”  

Sidate almost resigned in the early days of his arrival at the company. “It was my group leader who motivated me and convinced me to stay,” he says. 

The mechanical nature of the work imposed on workers, its intensity and insecurity, can end in tragedy. Libasse* still remembers the suffering of his cousin Mor Talla. “It was only thanks to the contacts of a company executive that he was able to receive medical treatment, and even then…” He too is on fixed-term contracts.    

He too has been on fixed-term contracts since joining the Sindia company. With no prospects of ever getting a taste of a permanent contract.    

“It’s still my hope if I’m to stay with this company for a long time. But when I see that there are old hands who have been here since the beginning with an unchanged status, I say to myself that I’ve got to stop dreaming”, says the young man.     

“Indeed, there are worse things than he is experiencing”, points out another Twyford ‘unionist’. “Employees have been at the plant since the installation phase, and right up to the moment I’m talking to you, they’re all signing six-month contracts, which is contrary to what we know about the Labour Code”.  

According to the people we spoke to, workers are not recruited on permanent contracts after having signed several fixed-term contracts. Some are even simply dismissed by the Chinese, who thus avoid disputes with the labour inspectorate and, possibly, the courts.   

“Even when they need a new group leader, they prefer to go and get someone from outside the factory who knows nothing about the job. It could be a student whom we old hands train to become our leader. Experienced workers, on the other hand, hardly ever get promoted”, says one of the trade unionists.   

Rank advancement 

With regard to human resources management, Twyford is also accused of making increasing use of “forced lay-offs”. This system deprives certain workers of many days’ work and therefore of financial income. It’s not an innocent strategy, notes the union contact quoted above.  

“Many of our contacts have condemned the increasing presence of foreign migrants in the factory, generally Guineans or other nationalities passing through Senegal. We think that the Chinese are choosing them as illegal workers, so that they can pay them even lower wages than we do, without any state control”.  

This raises the question of promotion within the company. According to our information, Twyford has around 1,500 employees in all categories. We were unable to verify this figure with management. 

“The Chinese have criteria that only they understand. From what we’ve seen over the years, they rarely take skills or diplomas into account when advancing workers in rank. They rely solely on their own perspectives. It’s a way of punishing deserving workers whom they suspect of unionizing inside the factory”, explains Bachir, who points to this as his second obsession after the pay slip.   

A labour inspector who requested anonymity explains the reason for the stagnation of certain workers in terms of rank, even though they have been with the company for several years. “The advancement of an employee in the hierarchy is codified. While it is compulsory in the civil service, it is not in the private sector, where it is left to the discretion of the employer”.  

Sidate almost resigned in the early days of his arrival at the company. “It was my group leader who motivated me and convinced me to stay,” he says. 

“Twyford may be taking advantage of the investment code”. 

What if the workers at the Twyford factory in Sindia were the victims of the incentives that labour law offers investors in their first years of operation?  

According to our investigations, Twyford does indeed have approval under Senegal’s Investment Code, but we were not given the date on which this sought-after stamp of approval was obtained. This document, issued by the Agence de promotion des investissements et grands travaux (APIX), allows Twyford to deviate from certain intangible principles of labour law in Senegal. Workers pay the price directly.  

“If the company has obtained approval for the project, the employer can issue and renew fixed-term contracts for a period of 5 years without infringing the provisions of the law. Basically, the idea is to help investors achieve a successful return on their investment and encourage entrepreneurs to create jobs”, explains the labour inspector.   

However, the date on which this approval takes effect is “extremely important”, he adds.  

“Any investor meeting the criteria for approval is eligible. But this deviation on fixed-term contracts can only be applied to employees recruited after the approval has been obtained, and not to those who were previously with the company. 

According to the tedmaster.org platform, adherence to the investment code offers several advantages to companies: tax exemptions, investment facilities, tax benefits, transfer of profits and capital, legal guarantees, etc.  

Approval is divided into two stages: approval to proceed and approval to operate.  

The first concerns the advantages offered to the investor during the company’s start-up period. It is this approval that enables the employer to renew workers’ contracts for several years.  

The “agrément d’exploitation” of “application for approval” is another package of incentives offered to a company once its activities have actually begun.  

Twyford has thus been able to benefit from duty-free packages on materials and equipment essential to the production of  ceramic  tiles but unavailable in Senegal. It was also able to obtain suspensions on the payment of value-added tax (VAT) in its transactions with local suppliers concerning products required for its factory operations.  

According to the specialized website senegal-export.com, “the raw materials used for (the manufacture of tiles) come from the regions of Kaolack, Kédougou, Tambacounda and Thiès”.   

Concerns about IPRES contributions  

Employer deductions for the Institut de prévoyance retraite (IPRES) [IPRES is the national pension scheme of Senegal] are another source of concern for Twyford workers. They are listed on all the pay slips we have collected.

They should therefore be in the IPRES coffers. But are they? Twyford employees say they have no idea. 

“Many of us have tried to find out from management or human resource officers. But we’ve never received a reply. They always end up letting us off with promises,” says Sidate.   

According to the aforementioned labour inspector, “social charges are impossible for all companies operating in Senegal”.   

In the absence of an in-house union to deal with their concerns, some workers are considering obtaining this information from the Mbour IPRES agency to which they belong.

Does Twyford pay pension contributions to the Mbour IPRES agency? When questioned, the head of the agency replied: “This matter does not concern you, as you are not a party to it; only the plant’s employees can obtain such information from us.

Pay slips also include the lump-sum contribution payable by employers (CFCE). “This is equivalent to 3% of the company’s payroll and must be paid “no later than the 15th of the following month”. However, “since 2019, all new business start-ups are exempt from CFCE for a period of three years”, points out a specialist in employment law.  

This exemption can even be extended for a further five years “if the jobs created as part of the approved investment programme exceed 200, or if at least 90% of the jobs created are located outside the Dakar region”. 

Is the labour inspectorate a weak link? 

Twyford’s employees have a strong grudge against the labuor inspectorate, which they accuse of complicity with their Chinese employers. “Our whole problem is the labour inspectors. If there were sanctions, billaahi (in God’s name), the contractors would respect their workers. We’re being treated like slaves in our own country,” Sidate blurts out.

“Cases where workers’ complaints are upheld by a labour inspector are almost non-existent. And even if they are, the decisions are almost never applied against the Chinese,” complains Bachir.

In the absence of union officials equipped to conduct negotiations with Chinese employers, workers are not always aware of changes in labour laws and the advantages they offer investors. But the labour inspector interviewed above doesn’t seem to condemn the practices of Twyford’s Chinese employers. 

He goes on to point out the inadequacy of the resources allocated to the corps of labour inspectors, their reduced numbers and the size of the tasks they have to perform. Senegal currently has 21 labour inspectors and 47 labour inspectors, i.e. a total of 68 senior civil servants to deal with the affairs of 400,000 workers. However, the International Labor Office (ILO) recommends a ratio of 1 labour inspector for every 40,000 workers in developing countries, explains a labour law specialist.

Added to this is the “arrogance” of some employers and the “sense of impunity” of others. 

For the year 2023, the Department of Labor Statistics revealed that out of 582 cases of individual labour disputes referred to the courts by labour inspectors, employers didn’t appear in court after several summons in 151 of them.

Most of these cases concern the Dakar and Thiès regions. The Twyford factory in Sindia is in the Thiès “jurisdiction”…

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 Twyford: No one willing to speak!

We tried for three months, but couldn’t meet Twyford’s management or any of the plant’s managers. They were unwilling to speak to us. They seem to have also shut down all levels likely to be sources of information.

Several people closer to the management have more or less clearly stated their fear of speaking out (even off the record) for fear of reprisals. Some accepted appointments to meet outside the company premises, but never kept them. Others came up with last-minute excuses, eventually giving up on any interview, even off the record. We tried repeatedly – in vain, to get some workers to speak out – and our efforts to contact the economic and commercial advisor at the Chinese Embassy in Senegal proved futile.

A feeling of suspicion seems to have crept into the factory. But there are still some brave workers who have taken the risk of telling their stories, feelings, disappointments and fears, and all of them are almost without hope… We decided to protect them with by using pseudonyms in this story. Except for Mor Talla, the accident victim quoted at the beginning of the article…

Used with the publisher’s permission.

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