Bad company to work for

<p>I worked as a sub editor and proof reader for various Fever newspapers at one company for nearly a year and a half. During this time Media 24 bought the company and retrenched about half of the staff at the company, including me. Media 24 has been retrenching a lot of staff and closing down a lot of companies around the country. Lunga Mayaba and Neil Tapinos were in charge of human resources and retrenchments at the time. I had a number of disabilities, which the company knew about from the first day of my job. Lunga and Neil showed no empathy whatsoever to any of the staff who were retrenched. They were very cold towards us and I could see in their faces that they didn’t give a damn about us. They were just fulfilling their duties. After all the sacrifices I’d made for the company and considering the disabilities I had, I felt this was not right.</p> <p> </p> <p>To make things worse, all staff were reprimanded for posting statuses on their personal Facebook profiles about how they felt about their retrenchment. Even if they just said how they felt and said nothing defamatory about the company or staff, they were still reprimanded. I feel this is totally unacceptable.</p> <p> </p> <p>I later learnt that by law companies, even private ones, have to do whatever they can to retain disabled employees instead of retrenching them. So Media24 went against my rights. I also learnt that companies have to accommodate their disabled employee’s needs. The company did not accommodate some of my needs resulting from the disabilities. After Media 24 retrenched me they placed someone else in my position, so I took them to CCMA. At the time I did not know my rights as a disabled employee so I did not mention that I was disabled and lost the case. I noticed that whenever I app**** for a job at Media 24 after that, I was never asked for an interview. Obviously they have it in their records that I took them to CCMA and they refuse to employ me because of that.</p> <p> </p> <p>About a year after my retrenchment I was in Pietermaritzburg (PMB) to apply for a disability grant from SASSA. Media 24’s KZN headquarters was in PMB at that time. SASSA told me that before I could proceed with my application I had to get Media 24 to sign a document to say I never received a pension from them. I had very little money at that stage but made the effort to send the document via fax to email to Lunga. Faxing is very expensive. A week later I still had no reply from Lunga. A friend took me to Media 24’s headquarters to speak to Lunga. When he came downstairs to see me he said he did not have to see me as I had not made an appointment to see him. I asked him why he had not rep**** to my email. He said he didn’t because the document I sent him was an annexure and I had not sent him the full document. I told him that’s the only document SASSA gave me. I couldn’t understand why he did not at least reply to my email and tell me that. He treated me with disrespect and clearly had a bad attitude. I was under pressure to get my grant application done ASAP and he was delaying the process but couldn’t give a damn. I was shocked and ended up crying after I left the building, although I got what I needed.</p> <p> </p> <p>I have heard that I was not the only disabled employee to be treated badly at Media 24. Other people have complained too. There was a guy with a mobility impairment employed there who was fired because he regularly did not get to work on time. The article about him said this was because his mobility impairment made him slow to walk to the building and his desk. Their code of ethics says they respect diversity, including disabled people, but clearly this is not what they are doing. If you have a disability, do NOT work for Media 24. And even if you have no disability, I still say Media 24 is a bad company to work for because of management’s attitude and all the retrenchments and closures they are doing. If you get employed at one of their print divisions you might not be employed for long.</p>