The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) is poised to engage in face-off with the management of Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL) over its ‘anti-labour’ stance.
The company allegedly refused to discontinue with casualization of workers and regular lay-off of staff, which NLC maintained was anti-labour.
The maltreatment has forced the Delta state wing of the union to call on the Government of the oil rich state to immediately order the company and its contractors to stop engaging in, what it described as “mindless and obnoxious” anti-labour practices.
The body said the company’s operational activities has since held the state’s oil and gas sector hostage and may soon degenerate into industrial crisis.
The body’s state chairman, Comrade Williams Akporeha, in Asaba, said, “The persistent casualization and wilful dismissal of workers” by the company and its contractors has placed the management of the company and the union on warpath.
According to him, labour would no longer fold its arms and watch the company tactically entrenching slave trade in the state.
He said, “it is bad enough that Chevron management forbids the unionization of their contract employees. The wicked aspect of it is that these workers have had to agree to less than acceptable work conditions just to earn a living. Yet, they are being put on the firing line daily by their paymasters supervised by Chevron.”
Making allusion to the recent call-out of the members of the Warri Zonal Council of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) on protest, Akporeha described the activities of the Chevron as “a time-bomb waiting to explode.”
“As we speak, the Chevron branches of NUPENG are on strike and you know how these things work, it can attract solidarity and escalate, so it is a time-bomb that government and other well meaning Deltans need to defuse by their immediate intervention with a view to discontinue the anti-labour practices and regular lay-off of staff by Chevron to avoid triggering a state-wide industrial crisis”, Akporeha insisted.
He said the mistreatment being meted out on the workers did not only violate the rights of the workers but a rebellious against the provision of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and articulated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other international instruments.
“The congress would like to strongly advise the management of Chevron Nigeria Limited to retrace its steps and restrain from its obnoxious practices to avoid a possible face-off with the Delta State Council of Nigeria Labour Congress”, Akporeha further submitted.