MAKKAH — The labor office in Makkah is currently considering a complaint filed by seven women working for a big pharma company in which they said that they were made to do hard labor — loading and unloading heavy drug cartons. The women accused the company of violating the contracts under which they have been working as "medicine codifiers", which means putting price tags on medicine boxes and bottles. A spokeswoman, who referred to her name by her first initials of M.H, asked the labor office for justice. She said the company not only breached the contracts with them but also gave them letters of retrenchment, which they refused to accept. She said she was working with other women colleagues in a drug warehouse under the job title of medicine codifiers but they were suddenly asked to carry cartons because there was shortage in the number of the male workers. She said they did this difficult job, which was against their nature, waiting for the men workers to arrive but the manager asked them either to continue this hard labor or quit. "We continued to do this hard labor but all of a sudden the company sent us retrenchment letters which we refused to accept," she said. The spokeswoman asked the labor office to resolve their problem and compensate them financially for the hard work they had been doing. She said the company had breached the labor laws, which prevent employers from asking their employees to do jobs other than the ones agreed upon.
