No Job Security For Security Workers Under Capitalism

(Photo: Titanium Security Facebook page)

 Written by: Ned K. on 5 August 2023

The capitalists who own the thousands of businesses across the country and their governments at federal, state and council levels have created armies, police forces and private security companies to protect their property and to maintain the operation of capitalism on a day-to-day basis.

The workers who constitute the armies, police forces and private security companies are employed in a scale of decreasing wages and job security. 

At the bottom of the scale are workers employed by private security companies. Most are lucky to be paid even the minimum Award rates of pay and many have minimal job security due to contract changes and insecure hours of work.

The private security industry employs many new migrant workers and older workers displaced from other industries such as the car industry that no longer exist.

Security companies come and go as they compete on price to win contracts in both the private and public sector.

Like the building industry, their insecure work is made even more insecure by companies going belly-up. The latest one is Titanium Security in SA which went into liquidation on 1 August leaving workers without pay for work performed and with loss of entitlements such as annual leave, superannuation   and long service leave. Titanium served a similar fate in 2021 when it was saved from liquidation by a Deed of Company Arrangement which enabled it to keep trading.
Titanium had won some large security contracts including SA Government contracts to provide security services for SA Water, the water utilities body in SA. 

Their website also states Titanium are a member of the Defence Industry Security Program (DISP) which allowed them to provide government defence department cleared personnel.  

When Titanium went belly-up on 1 August, their security officers kept working at their usual workplace not knowing who they were working for, who was paying them and who would be their next security company employer, if any.

Meanwhile the Director of Titanium was enjoying the good life in the Greek islands.

How governments of the Labor type can continue to treat workers this way by exposing them to contracted out private for-profit employers shows how embedded Labor governments remain in the capitalist system.