The Air Transport Senior Staff Services Association of Nigeria says it will soon re-negotiate with Skyway Aviation Handling Company management over an alleged plan to retrench some of its members.
ATSSSAN’s President, Benjamin Okewu, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday in Lagos.
NAN gathered from a reliable source that SAHCOL had planned to disengage some workers from its payroll over what it termed “rightsizing and redundancy”.
The source said the management had drawn up a list of those to be affected and the compensation they would be given.
Okewu told NAN that ATSSSAN had earlier entered into negotiations with the management to protect the rights of the affected workers but could not resolve the issue.
He said: “What the law says is that you should use your first endeavour to negotiate.
“So we started negotiating and in the middle of the negotiation, they started transferring our union leaders at the level of the branch.
“That made us to pull out of the negotiation, but now that they have stopped it, we are going to resume negotiation soon.”
Okewu promised the affected staff that ATSSSAN would do its best in negotiating and getting the best package for them in accordance with the extant labour laws.
He, however, faulted the plan by SAHCOL to lay off the workers when the company had been declaring profit on an annual basis.
“It does not make sense because if your business is increasing, you are supposed to be employing more hands and not sacking them,” Okewu said.
When contacted, the spokesman of SAHCOL, Basil Agboarumi, promised to call back, but had yet to do so when the report was filed.
NAN.
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