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To: Aisha R. Pandor and Alen Ribic, Co-founders of SweepSouth

SweepSouth, stop exploiting your workers

We call on SweepSouth to make a firm commitment to do the following:

1. Pay your workers a decent living wage that factors into account the transportation and data costs that your workers incur to use your platform.

2. Give necessary benefits such as sick leave or annual leave to workers who work the maximum hours per week.

Why is this important?

SweepSouth is a tech startup that connects people with domestic workers on demand. On their site they claim:

"Our cleaners rest assured knowing that with SweepSouth they can establish a career to be proud of with steady work and increased earning potential."

This statement is out of sync with the following that has been reported by workers:

1. Sweepsouth pay their workers from R25/hour.

2. Workers are required to pay for their own transport and data. As most workers live far away from areas where they are called to, transport can cost on average R25-R50 per day. Data can cost R10 a day as workers don't buy bulk data and buy at premium rates.

3. Workers who work the maximum hours per week are still wage workers who don't earn sick leave or annual leave.

This means that for a solid day's work, Sweepsouth workers can earn as little as R50 per day, which workers accept because they feel that it is "better than nothing".

When faced with these issues, SweepSouth's CEO acknowledged that the rate of R25/hr wasn't good enough, but justified it by saying it was in line with what people were used to paying.

We don't think that this practice is okay. Even though the rate of R25/hr is a legal wage, it is very far from a living wage. It is not a wage that allows workers to "establish a career" or "increase their earning potential". It's a wage that sustains the widespread reality of chronic underemployment that unskilled workers in South Africa find themselves in.

We believe Sweepsouth can, and should, do better. If they are committed to ethical practices and worker empowerment, they need to charge more for their service in order to pay their workers a living wage. The logic that "an exploitative job is better than no job" does not belong in 2018.

Domestic workers deserve living wages.

Updates

2019-11-17 13:13:38 +0200

100 signatures reached

2018-04-17 17:45:48 +0200

50 signatures reached

2018-02-24 11:35:09 +0200

25 signatures reached

2018-02-23 23:37:53 +0200

10 signatures reached