With the retrenchment of over 2,500 workers across diverse sectors of the economy in recent times, there are indications that more companies are set to disengage scores of their employees, as the recession continues to bite harder.
Skye Bank Plc is one of the companies proposing to send some of their employees into the labour market. The financial institution is set to disengage no fewer than 60 members of its staff, barely four months after a similar exercise saw to the exit of about 100 employees from the employment of the bank.
Investigations by The Point revealed that most of the affected workers were temporary staff, whose disengagement is hinged on non-performance, indiscipline and other cost-cutting measures by the financial institution.
A top source in the financial institution, who pleaded anonymity, told The Point that about half of the affected members of staff would be sacked due to their complaints over poor remuneration and unfair treatment on the part of the bank management.
According to her, the maximum a graduate (temporary staff) collects as salary is N50,000, while some of the permanent staff, who don’t work as much the temporary staff, earn as much as N100,000.
She said, “Most of the preferred staff are lazy, all they do almost every day is to chat and play games on the desktop computer, which they are supposed to work with. “The affected staff started having problems with the management, when some of them requested for salary increment. And instead of promising them that something would be done about their request, they were issued queries without fore warnings.
The intention of the board is to employ new temporary staff, who it will pay less than those to be laid off.” But contrary to the allegation of poor remuneration preferred against the bank management, the Head, Corporate and Brand Communication, Skye Bank Plc, Mr. Nduneche Ezurike, stated that the staff of the bank across branches are duly and properly paid.
He said that the management of the bank approved the payment of generous entitlements and severance packages to them as contained in their engagement letters.
Meanwhile, an industry source revealed that about 12 top management staff of one of the leading Lagos-based cement manufacturers, would soon be shown the way out.
Findings revealed that the affected senior staff, who would be ask to resign their appointments in the company any moment from now, were facing disengagement, due to their loyalty to the immediate past Managing Director of the company. “It was shocking to us, because these are the best hands in the company.
About 70 per cent of them had not only won several awards in the company, but they had also won awards for the company. They would be briefed next week that their services are no longer needed in the company and asked to resign within that week.
The new MD is acting as if the whole move has been scripted,” the source told The Point. Another company involved in the sack gale is oil giant, Total Nigeria, which had asked some of the affected workers to leave, shortly after they led a protest, which resulted to the chaos witnessed at the Apapa branch of the company sometimes last year, against the oil firm’s management over what they described as ‘man’s inhumanity to man’.
The South-West zonal chairman of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Alhaji Tokunbo Korodo, confirmed the development, which led to the suspension of loading activities in the company early this month, to The Point; a development Korodo attributed to Total’s resistance to the unionisation of its contract workers in its Lagos, Kaduna and Koko, in Delta State blending plants.
The NUPENG boss disclosed that the company introduced three-month contract employment, whereby staff who had worked in the company for five to six years, were made to reapply for threemonth contract, instead of regularising their appointments after threemonth probation.
“The introduction of the threemonth contract employment, instead of the normal three-month probation, amounted to slave labour. Those who have worked for five to six years were made to re-apply for three-month contract, and this contradicts Nigerian labour laws.
The management has also penciled down all the unionised workers for sack,” he alleged. Korodo accused the company of stopping workers under its contract employment scheme from joining the union.
According to him, the company has moved to terminate the appointments of the workers, who had joined the union, in defiance of strong warnings issued by the company.
“In view of this, the union has directed all workers in Total downstream to stop work until the management allows workers to join the union and the slave labour introduced cancelled,” he added.
Though, he confirmed that the issues had been resolved, as everybody has been asked to maintain the status quo, he insisted his group will not accept any unfair treatment inflicted on its members.
