Cartrack ‘manager’: You did not really work yourself to death

A message allegedly sent by a Cartrack manager to an employee, telling her a power outage meant she hadn’t really “worked herself to death”, has taken on chilling significance following the death of a colleague at the company’s Rosebank offices. The message is at the centre of a whistle-blower account that paints a picture of a workplace where illegal overtime was allegedly routine, complaints were allegedly suppressed and workers were allegedly made to feel that exhaustion was their problem to bear. “Imagine being forced to stay in a non-operational control room and then being told to continue working more shifts because when the power was out, I didn’t work myself to death,” the whistleblower toldThe Citizen.

“Oh my word, my mental health was so bad. I could’ve easily been this lady who just passed on.” The whistle-blower, an alleged former controller at Cartrack who asked not to be named, came forward after the death of her colleague, Gcina Dhladhla, at the company’s offices. The whistle-blower said the manager’s message was sent during a period of extended overtime when a power outage at a client site had halted operations briefly.

Rather than stand workers down, management used the downtime to justify keeping staff on shift. “I know you were on duty Saturday and Sunday, but the power was off and you did not really work yourself to death,” the manager allegedly wrote. The whistleblower says those words, dismissive at the time, now feel impossible to read without thinking of her colleague.

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The whistleblower says the culture that produced that message was systemic. She was allegedly required to work two days, two nights and then receive four days off, all 12-hour shifts. In practice, she says, that arrangement was regularly discarded.

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