By Moses John
Abuja
President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Ayuba Wabba said the movement picketed the corporate headquarters of telecommunication giant, MTN and the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) as a result of inhuman treatment of workers in the two companies.
Wabba, who said the congress action coincided with the international day for decent work, said casualisation of workers by multinationals and other indigenous companies is a crime against humanity and will be resisted by labour.
He said in the case of NTN Nigeria, contrary to their refusing unionisation, its counterpart in South Africa, Kenya and Ghana were unionised and have better working condition.
“We have received several complaints from our counterparts in congress of South African trade unions in Soweto, because they wanted to import the same conditions of service in South Africa, where the company is located. In South Africa, MTN workers are unionised all by the congress of South African trade Union (COSATU), their affiliates from the telecommunication sector.
“Same with the one in Kenya and that of Ghana. Our question is, why should the MTN workers in Nigeria be the people that will be treated worse? So this campaign today is a global strategy endorsed by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) all over the world that we must stand up for MTN Nigeria workers and they must have their rights, they must also have a condition of service that is commensurate with MTN workers in South Africa, in Kenya and the other parts of the world. Why should they be a difference between the condition of MTN workers here in Nigeria and what obtains elsewhere around the world?”
He said labour would come back to picket MTN outlets nationwide if these issues were not tackled.
“We must insist that they must continue to work in dignity, they must continue to work in honour and, therefore, they are not slaves. We have told them clearly that the corporate headquarters is in Lagos and so this is a starting point and we will be ready in the near future if this issue is not addressed, to actually picket MTN offices all over Nigeria because we have done that in the past and we thought that MTN workers deserve a better deal.”
