The man in the hut opposite our house

Quote from serafina

I had the pleasure to see the new hut with my own eyes today. I was afraid I would get caught leaving a suspicious bag in @Splinter's front garden. However, the hut was empty, the advertising TECHOS was very neat and highly visible.

I was quite disappointed I couldn't see also the man... perhaps he is not appreciating the gift he was given...?

He was probably asleep

Finally the electricity was disconnected from the old hut and connected to the new one by the power company and this morning the alarm man disconnected the siren, search lights and machine guns from the old hut for placing on the new one.

We are hoping that the builder will arrive today or tomorrow because he intends to put a rope around the wooden hut, attach it to his truck and drag it to the ground.

That will certainly be a Kodak moment.

The fat layabout has been sent home until the pandemic restrictions become clearer, which makes no difference to security anyway, so it makes you wonder about the sanity of the whole exercise in the first place.

I understand the neighbours are still paying him while he's not there. This is mainly because the law in this country falls heavily in favour of the 'employee', regardless of their contractual situation, if you get my drift.

We don't pay him because it's a complete waste of money.

The hut is no more! It's an ex hut.

The fat man doesn't like his new working conditions one bit, mainly because he's no longer out of sight. But wait, there are new developments...

Last week, as I was leaving on my bike for some deliveries, I noticed that he was fast asleep at 1330, so stopped to take a photo of him. On my return at 1630, he was still asleep so I recorded Adri walking over to shout at him to wake him up. Long story short, we posted both on the residents' Whatsapp group which caused a great deal of anger, considering how much he is being paid to sleep on the job. One of the leading residents went over later and read the riot act to him, telling him in no uncertain terms that if it happens again, he's out.

It's also important to know that we have been trying to normalise (legalise) his employment situation which includes a life assurance policy since he is a health risk, having already had a heart attack, albeit at home. If he died on the job, we'd have a serious problem. But of course, he prefers cash in hand as it keeps him under the radar and doesn't affect his ability to collect government hand outs.

But the other day, as the new hut builder came to see me about our chimney, fat man told the builder that if we try to normalise his status, he would sue us all for every penny he could get and he would probably win under the laws that massively favour those with less resources.

That is now seen as a threat and he has now become persona non grata and so, under the veil of Covid 19/lockdown etc, today he will told not to come back for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, we now have to tackle the prickly subject of his rights and believe me, people like him have those rights and they know it, even though they would prefer to work 'in black'.

Anyway, I'm rejoicing in the fact that the consensus is to boot him out and I'm hoping I won't ever have to see or hear the lazy piece of shit ever again.

Quote from Rice

I’m very surprised that people who choose to work en negro would have the same legal protections as those who work en blanco.

How does that work?

If you fire them they can sue you for a month's wages for every year they've worked for you plus holidays and a pile of other extras. If you don't want them anymore and let it drag on, the problem simply snowballs with the end result being even worse.

Many don't want to work in 'white' because they will lose their government subsidies like social security (plans), but to pay a security man as an employee is ridiculously expensive.

Quote from Rice

This has always seemed completely insane to me. We have friends who simply could no longer afford to pay for someone to regularly clean their house. Yet they had to pay their long-time cleaning woman for an additional year, with no cleaning, in order to comply with the law.

But if someone is working en negro, wouldn’t that person be voluntarily giving up the legal protections of working en blanco? Not paying income taxes, yet ???

Nope, they are legally protected even in casual labour. The onus is on the 'employer' each and every time, so it's a no-win for us and a win win for the casual employee every time.