By Victor Ahiuma-Young

NIGERIA Labour Congress, NLC, Delta State council, has called on the state government to prevail on the management of Chevron Nigeria Limited and its contractors to end alleged unfair labour practices to avoid a looming industrial unrest in the company’s operations in the state.

Chairman of the state NLC, Mr. Williams Akporeha, in a statement, warned that perceived persistent casualisation and willful dismissal of workers by and its contractors would soon throw the state into unprecedented industrial crisis.

According to him, “Labour cannot continue to watch a tactical institutionalisation of slave labour by Chevron and its contractors. It is bad enough that Chevron management forbids the unionisation of their contract employees. The wicked aspect of it is that these workers have been forced to agree to unacceptable working conditions just to earn a living, now they are practically being enslaved daily by their paymasters supervised by Chevron.”

He noted  that the Warri zonal council of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers, NUPENG, had already called out their members on protest, a situation he described as a ticking time-bomb.
He said: “As  we speak, the Chevron branches of NUPENG are on strike and you know how these things work, it can attract solidarity and escalate.