By Victor AHIUMA-YOUNG

NIGERIA Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, has vowed to employ all powers and influence at its disposal to confront both the Shell Development Company, SPDC and Chevron Nigeria Limited, in their alleged unfair labour practices among other ill treatment of Nigerian workers.

President of NUPENG, Comrade Igwe Achese, accused SPDC especially of enslaving some Nigerians who worked for it several years under casual, contract and service workers for 20, 15 and 10, denying them of basic rights.

He claimed that the union had been having issues of unfair labour practices with SPDC for decades and lamented that in the past nod year, it had worsened because of its so-called divestment policy in which SPDC is moving away from Midstream to deep sea.

According to Comrade Achese, “Contract workers who have worked for Shell for 30, 20, 15, and 10 years as cooks, gardeners, operators among other named called are being paid just N50.000 as terminal benefits. As we speak, SPDC has sold all it’s locations in Warri in the name of divestment.

Who are the buyers? You will be surprised if you find out. When we asked who gave them permission, they will say it is government. Just because you are divesting, people that have worked for you all these years, you paid them N50,000 which is equivalent to  one month salary, and you will ask them to go, what sort slavery is is that? Most of Nigerians in the divested company have lost their jobs. But the core staff of SPDC, the least got N50million each. Is that fair?

“We have made several representations to the National Assembly, Ministry of Labour and Productivity, Ministry of Petroleum and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, all to no avail. We have held over 15 meetings  to ensure that the contract workers got fair deal without positive result.

We have decided to take the matter up in our own ways.  NUPENG started picketing of all Shell formations in the country, Tuesday November 27, as a result of the deadlock of talks in November 19, 2012. The National Executive Council of NUPENG, at its meeting in Calabar took the decision to picket all Shell formations if the on-going talks deadlocked again.”

“Let me re-iterate that, we are going to sustain the picketing and stoppage of fuel supply to Shell, until all the labour issues are resolved.  The management of Shell through its recalcitrant posture interfered in the affairs of the union by failing to recognise the care-taker committee set up by the union to replace the dissolved union executives accused of anti-union activities.

The management of Shell went the extra mile to sack the Chairman of the Care-taker Committee and sixteen others under the cover that they were divesting the fire department. We cannot fold our hands as a union that is supposed to protect the interest of our workers to allow Shell hire and fire at will without respecting the extant labour laws of this country.

We see the sack of our members in Shell as that of victimisation because of their union activities.In all these issues, the Shell management breached our labour laws by not consulting with the parent union of NUPENG on the labour related issues.  Our fight against casual, contract staff or service contract staff without conditions of service will continue and it must be resisted.

On Chevron, NUPENG President said, “the oil multinational, Chevron has also rendered some of our members redundant through termination of their appointments.  Chevron management refused to renew their contractual agreements which had hitherto engaged our workers and are transferring them from contract staff to labour service workers.  This move is totally unacceptable, unjustified, uncalled for and discriminatory.”

“The Union condemns in its entirety and vows to fight on, until such workers are properly placed to enjoy conditions of service.  The union will not condone a situation in Chevron whereby the contractual agreement of the big six is terminated and a new contract for service providers is created.