Following the announcement that 9th December was to be a holiday, a dispute arose between employees and management at smelting firm Alba.

Workers allege that they should have been paid for working on the holiday, but the company instead granted 2,000 employees a compensatory day off. Employees were therefore not paid overtime, but had a day added to their annual leave, in violation of labour law.

The company denied the allegations, saying it had offered shift employees the option of a compensatory day off or application for overtime.

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre approached Alba to invite them to respond to the allegations; they did not respond.