By Victor Ahiuma-Young

Nigerian workers have for  some time been at the receiving end of the economic woes confronting the country as employers inflict all forms of unfair labour practices on them.

Among these unfair labour practices are casaualisation, outsourcing, contract staffing, unprocedural termination, redundancies, de-unionisation and refusal to allow employees to join unions among others. 

Organised Labour has not been finding the ill-treatment funny despite its efforts at checkmating the menace.

Not long ago, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, informed of its resolve to reconstitute and reinvigorate its anti-casualisation committee that was a thorn in the flesh of employers during the tenure of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as NLC president, to combat these indecent employment practices.

Its counterpart, the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, has also risen up against the increasing cases of unfair labour practices in the country, disclosing that it has equally set up an anti-casualisation committee.

Speaking on the challenges, the President of TUC, Festus Osifo, said: “One issue that has remained on the front burner is the issue of unfair labour practices in the Nigerian banking sector. Most of the banks in Nigeria are refusing workers to be organised and belong to the unions in the sector.

“In this case, the Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial institutions, ASSBIFI, for senior staff, and the National Union of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions’ Employees, NUBIFIE, for junior staff.

“These banks do everything possible to strangulate the unions and to prevent workers from joining the union when they are being employed.

“According to our laws, especially when it is the senior staff union, you opt-in, unlike the junior staff union where you opt-out. So in this case, when they are employing them, they give them a form to fill and ask them to declare from day one not to belong to the union. We have a special case in Heritage Bank.

“The bank sacked about 40 members of ASSBIFI by extension, members of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria and paid them less than three months’ salaries and they asked them to go home.

“They refused to sit down with the union to have a conversation on the proper take-home pay of these workers. We are not averse to employers  carrying out redundancy, but the redundancy must be carried out in good faith, and in line with the rules and international standards. You  cannot declare redundancy where you have jobs, jobs that are permanent.

“You cannot declare redundancy on the permanent staff and turn around to casualise the same job that you have declared redundancy on. It is clearly an aberration. That is what Heritage Bank has done. We are calling on the bank to do the right thing because what it has done is anti-labour and we would not accept such practices.

“We have been having issues of casualisation. A lot of companies are moving from the era of permanent staff to casual staff. In fact, they employ casual staff to do sensitive functions in their organisations . We have been kicking against this over the years and saying this is a no no. We all know that as casual staff, there are negative consequences and we know what the implications are. Besides the fact that their pay is quite poor, they do not have leave, medicals and pensions among others, including job security.

“This is a clear aberration to what the International Labour Organisation, ILO, stood for over the years. So we call on these companies that are doing this to end the practice. We would continuously advocate for the right thing to be done and where necessary, we will fight these companies. This is one of the reasons TUC recently set up a committee on anti-casualisation to collate these issues holistically and address them head-on.

“We now have a new government, and we look forward to who would be the Minister of Labour.  For us, that is key, we need somebody that truly understands the yearnings of the workers and yearnings of Organised Labour, somebody who would be able to advocate for the Nigerian workers before the government and private sector employers. We want such a person to be at the helm of affairs of labour, somebody that truly understands our pain and the plight of Nigerian workers in general.

”On Greener Energy Transition and just transition, this is one thing we have been advocating, a lot of the affiliates of TUC have been advocating just transition. We all know the countries that are contributing to this climate change, and that are producing and emitting these gases that are affecting the atmosphere and causing global warming. Let us push them to do much more to remedy the situation , let us push them to do what is right. Let us not push Africa which is contributing less than three per cent to this entire problem, let us not push Africa to cut down on the use of this gas much more because the more they do that, the more jobs are being lost and companies are being closed down.

“So for us, we fully endorse the just transition, but in the process, we have to do it with a human face in such a way that the jobs of our members are fully protected.”