Rasheed Gutta Johannesburg businessman
Renowned Johannesburg businessman Rasheed Gutta has been caught on tape swearing at his employees.
And to add woes to Gutta, his employees are accusing him of unfair labour practices and have subsequently taken him to the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA).
In the May 2024 general elections Gutta stood as both Presidential and Premier candidate for his then newly-formed political party called Sun Party and campaigned on the ticket of honesty, transparency and benevolence.
In the tape, which is in possession of Tshwane Talks, Gutta can be heard arguing with his employees and swearing at them profusely, this after they (the employees) had asked him (Gutta) to pay them as per the agreement between them.
In the tape the employees are asking for the promised R6 400 payment because Gutta has instead paid them a paltry R3000 or R4000 in some instances.
“Don’t f..ck with me here hey, don’t f..cking talk sh…t here…explain to this f…ck a..s as to how this thing works,” says Gutta in the tape.
Rasheed Gutta is the owner of Home Italia, which is a furniture retail company with various stores around the country including at the Westgate Mall, where he is said to have arbitrarily retrenched 17 youthful employees who he had just employed in April this year but fired them in May this very same year 2025.
“There is general ill-treatment and underpayment of black workers at Gutta’s companies and drivers with a code 10 or 14 license get paid as little as R6000 a month while Indian and Coloured employees earn over R8000,” revealed a fuming employee.
In response to the allegations levelled at him, businessman Rasheed Gutta said the following:
“We wish to confirm that some employees at the Westgate Mall branch of the company (Home Italia) were retrenched due to a restructuring process that was followed procedurally according to the Labour Relations Act and we denounce any racist allegations made against us in the strongest possible way.”
One Dan Chauke, who is one of the workers who have been retrenched after working for less than two months at the Westgate branch of the company, said he was not bitter at all about bring retrenched as he fully understands that his retrenchment is in line with the company’s retrenchment process that adheres to the Labour Relations Act.
He admitted that he was working without a contract at Rasheed Gutta’s Home Italia furniture retail branch at the Westgate Mall.
Be that as it may, several other people working for Rasheed Gutta have confirmed to Tshwane Talks that indeed Gutta does abuse them and calls them names like f…ckers and idiots.
They added that they work without having signed any contracts with him.
“Recently Gutta came to one of the branches of the company and forced employees to take polygraph ( lie detector) tests,” lamented one employee.
According to the law, polygraph or lie detector tests may only be taken voluntarily and not through coercion, and the results of the polygraph (lie detector) test may not be used against an employee, as that would be tantamount to self-incrimination, which is not allowed in terms of the law.
Yet another disgruntled worker told Tshwane Talks that Gutta has a so-called lawyer who abates his (Gutta’s) abusive behaviour towards employees.
“We claim to be free in South Africa, yet we still have employers that are still abusing employees and several cases of unfair labour practices have been opened against Gutta at the CCMA but he doesn’t care neither about the CCMA nor the Department of Labour,” he said.
“Do we still have a government in South Africa? Do we still have the Department of Labour in this country? What is the Minister of Labour saying when employees are being victimised?”fumed another retrenched worker.
It has emerged that some people have been working for Gutta for over 8 years without being offered contracts, yet the Department of Labour keeps giving him “letters of good standing.”
A concerned worker said the following:
“We have political parties which claim to be representing black people, what are they saying about this Gutta guy?”