By Bimbola Oyesola, Geneva
Nigeria’s Organised Labour yesterday in Geneva, Switzerland, pleaded with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to prevail on multinational companies to end indiscriminate sack of Nigerian workers and replacing them with expatriates.
The President of the United Labour Congress (ULC), Mr. Joe Ajaero, speaking with Nigerian journalists at the ongoing 106th session of the International Labour Conference (ILC), also implored ILO to bring its influence to bear on the multinationals to stop indecent jobs in the country, especially casualisation and outsourcing of workers.
Ajaero, however, insisted that labour movements in Nigeria must unite to end the assault on workers and their movement by multinationals and other employers, saying, “we need Nigerian solution to Nigerian problems. ILO looks at global standards, which you discover we are not implementing in Nigeria. If you watch, some years back, even in the level of IndustriALL, we did some programmes to identify those companies involved in these precarious jobs.
“We think there is no synergy between unions, the labour centres and civil society in trying to ensure that employers in Nigeria comply with international standards. But those who regulate labour matters in Nigeria seem to be sleeping. For example, these days we do not have labour inspectors as we used to that go to the factories to ensure that standards are complied with.
“Entrepreneurs just set up companies without labour inspectors going there to ensure that standards are complied with. So, the Ministry of Labour should intensify effort by engaging labour inspectors so that all the standards are complied with before people take up jobs. Employers are taking advantage of the unemployment situation to exploit workers as they are not be ready to comply with minimum standards, including wage and safety standards.”
“Apart from unemployment, job security issues should be more paramount in all our agitations because if you employ 100 new workers and sack 5,000, it does not make sense. The level of job insecurity in Nigeria should be of serious concern, especially the multinationals who are importing Indian, Chinese and other so-called expatriates to take over Nigerian jobs in the oil and gas, electricity, telecommunications sectors, among others.”
He added that the multinationals also have a penchant for precarious jobs as most jobs are being casualised.
“If you say you are creating employment and such jobs are not decent, we should bring this matter before ILO. We should let ILO know that the jobs they are creating in Nigeria are jobs that people are using umbrella to sell credit cards and things like that. We need to emphasise on quality jobs and the security of existing jobs,” he stated.