Union to Fed Ex Red Star, ZTE, others: Pay workers or face shut down

The Nigeria Union of Postal and Telecommunication Employees on Wednesday called on multinational companies in the courier sector to pay their workers or face industrial shut down.
The President of the Union, Sunday Alhassan, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja.
Alhassan said this has become imperative as the union had continued to receive reports of the companies’ refusal to adhere to terms and conditions of services as it concerned payment of salaries.
“Many of them over time have not actually lived up to expectation on the issue of meeting up to the expectation of workers as regarding their entitlements and agreed payments,” he said.
Alhassan said this was especially true “as regards their increments on annual basis and some of them due to their inability to conclude negotiations in good time allowed these payments to go into arrears”.
He added: “Some of them have actually not made efforts to pay these arrears and rather than paying they come up with issues of redundancy for some of these workers.”
Alhassan said the union was currently facing similar issues with the FedEx Red Star Express courier company.
He said: “This is a company that has workers who are working round the clock to see this organisation grows.
“But the arrears of their one whole year negotiated increment have not been paid and instead of them to look at the possibility of that payment, they came up with the issue of restructuring.
“We are not comfortable with that and we want to send a very clear message to the company that the particular action should be shelved.”
Alhassan called on the Human Resources Department of the company to collaborate with the secretariat of the union to fashion out ways to resolve the issues.
He said anything contrary to that, the union might be left with no other option than to shut down the company.
The union president also gave a similar instance of ZTE Corporation, a CCTV installation company owned by Chinese nationals in Nigeria.
Alhassan said: “This company always wakes up every morning to declare redundancy and we have told them before that it should be put on hold.
“But information reaching us from our branches is that the company is about to meet for another declaration of redundancy of workers.
“As much as we believe that the economy is biting hard on everybody, the workers are not supposed to suffer these setbacks; there should be a way out.
“The workers have made their organisation to grow to this level and at the point they are supposed to benefit from their labour, instead they are being put on redundancy.”
Alhassan, therefore, urged all organisations in the post and telecommunication sector to put issues of redundancy and restructuring on hold.
NAN.