Francis Sadhere
Chairman of the Delta State Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Williams Akporeha, has called on the Delta State Government to immediately stop the management of Chevron and its contractors from further mindless anti labour practices to avoid industrial crisis that can lead to a major setback in the state’s oil and gas sector particularly in the company’s operational activities in Delta state.
Comrade Akporeha made the call recently in the wake of persistent casualization and willful dismissal of workers by the management of Chevron and its contractors.
According to him, “Labour cannot continue to watch a tactical institutionalization of slave labour by Chevron and its contractors. It is bad enough that Chevron management forbids the unionization of their contract employees,” adding that “the most wicked aspect of it is that these workers have had to agree to the 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”.
The NLC Chairman further disclosed that the Warri zonal council of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers (NUPENG) has already called out their members on protest, a situation he described as a ticking time bomb. “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”.
Comrade Akporeha described the practice in Chevron as not only a violation of human rights but also rebellious against the provisions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and advised the management of Chevron to retrace its steps or risk face-off with the Nigeria Labour Congress.
“We view this attitude by Chevron as an outright defiance and violation of the rights of workers as declared by the international Labour Organisation (ILO) and articulated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other international instruments,” said Akporeha.
“Congress would like to strongly advise the management of Chevron Nigeria Limited to retrace its steps and refrain from its obnoxious practice to avoid a possible face-off with the Delta State Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)” he added.
