As Nigeria joins the international community to mark World Labour Day today, there are calls on Labour movements in the country to reflect on endemic casualisation and discourage such oppression, writes Senior Correspondent ONYEWUCHI OJINNAKA
After graduation from university or polytechnic, a young man/woman enters the labour market, with the ultimate aim of securing a good job. Gainful employment detaches them from family care and puts them in a position to help in the upbringing of his or her siblings.
Tony (not real name), who has become popular in the labour market, after a long search for job, decided to enrol with an employment agency, which fixed him up with a factory. He received peanut for his hard labour. He had to part with substantial part of his first salary to the agency. After over six years of working with the company, he still remains a casual worker and thus has no right to any benefit from the company.
This is the dilemma of young graduates in the labour market. After many years of joblessness, the hapless job-seekers would gladly accept, with gratitude, any kind of job that comes their way under any condition, provided he goes out and comes in every day.
Casualisation in the Nigerian labour market has become an issue of great concern, as many workers continue to groan under this wicked strategy of cutting cost by employers. Statistics from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) shows that many workers in the telecommunications, oil and gas sectors are casual labourers. Other sectors with thousands of casual workers include mining and steel, banking and insurance. In these sectors, staff outsourcing and casualisation have become a norm, as workers in these sectors no longer have regularised employment terms.
As the country joins the rest of the world today, May 1 to mark the World Labour Day (Workers’ Day), stakeholders want issues of casualisation and outsourcing to be the focus of NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC), for the purpose of industrial harmony.
Labour pundits posit that casualisation of workers is exploitation of desperate job-seekers, describing it as indirect labour slavery. They point out that casual workers perform the same tasks as permanent workers, and yet without any job security and under ‘never-ending probation’.
TheNiche checks reveal that irregular or casual workers are frequently laid off, particularly just before they could become entitled to permanent contracts. Where there is unionism, moreover, most casual workers are not admitted as union members. Also, they receive lower wages and could be fired at any time by their employers without regard to labour laws.
Labour law
Legally, contract staffing and casualisation contravene Section 7 (1) of the Labour Act, Cap 198, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990. The Act provides that, “Not later than three months after the beginning of a worker’s period of employment with an employer, the employer shall give to the worker a written statement specifying the terms and conditions of employment, which include the nature of the employment, and if the contract is for a fixed term, the date when the contract expires.”
Also, Labour analysts argue that the continued engagement of casual labourers is at variance with provisions of Section 17 (a) of the Constitution, which guarantees “equal pay for equal work”. The section frowns on discrimination on account of sex, or any other ground whatsoever and therefore discrimination in pay between permanent and casual employees should not exist at all.
Casual worker status under the law
Section 9 (1) ( c) of the Labour Act 1974 defines contract of employment as any agreement, whether oral or written, express or implied, whereby one person agrees to employ another as a worker and that other person agrees to serve the employer as a worker.
The act describes a worker thus: “Any person who has entered into or works under a contract with an employer, whether the contract is for manual labour or clerical work, or is expressed or implied, or oral or written, and whether it is a contract of service or a contract personally to execute any work or labour.”
The Employment Compensation Act 2004 extends the definition of an employee to persons employed on a casual basis. According to the Act, an employee includes a person employed under apprenticeship or on casual basis.
A casual labourer, by the nature of his employment, hardly enters into a written contract with his employer. The mere fact that such contracts are not documented does not, however, exclude casual labour worker from the benefit and protection conferred on workers under the Act.
Unemployment
The dream of an average undergraduate is to come out of school and secure a very good job. But the shortage of employment, coupled with frustration, has compelled many graduates to take up jobs which are sometimes demeaning. Companies and organisations take undue advantage of the unemployment situation to keep people working under unpalatable conditions. Casualisation of labour or outsourcing are some of the ways employers shirk their responsibility to employers.
The disparity between the wages of casual and permanent workers is very wide, and casual workers are most times treated like second-class workers. Casual workers are not entitled to pension, housing fund, health insurance, bonuses or profit sharing, while their salaries are often slashed arbitrarily.
Banks, hotels, construction companies, telecommunication firms, oil companies, manufacturing companies and multinational are the major establishments which engage in recruiting contract/casual staff.
Some casual employees with good qualifications, which could be better than those of the permanent staff, are made to operate as subordinates, even while working extra hours for lesser pay.
According to International Labour Organisation (ILO), casuals are “workers who have an explicit or implicit contract of employment which is not expected to continue for more than a short period, whose duration is to be determined by circumstances. These workers may be classified as being employees or own-account workers, according to the specific circumstances of the employment contract.”
Employers’ tactic
In recent years, multinational companies, banks, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its subsidiaries, the electricity distribution companies and some other industries are using non-direct workers to perform key functions. They had laid off substantial number of their workforce to give way for contract staff.
Dilemma of casual workers
Michael Afolabi is a Higher National Diploma (HND) graduate, who could not secure a casual job with his latest certificate in one of the banks in Nigeria which had outsourced its teller jobs. The employers invited Ordinary National Diploma (OND) holders for the job, with the intention to pay them lesser amount despite subjecting them to strenuous work conditions. He applied with his OND and was employed. After some years, he presented his HND, which was never considered.
Another pathetic case is that of a young man, Jide, who was a casual worker with one of the leading oil firms in the country. TheNiche gathered that the young man had worked for more than 10 years for the oil firm, but now on the run for dear life. The company is allegedly threatening him for seeking its help to overcome a terminal ailment he got while on duty for the company. He was diagnosed with a complication that could become cancerous as a result of the accident.
It is the second time he was going through a gruelling experience on official duty; each time the company simply neglected his plight because he was a contract staff.
A visit to factories in any part of the country reveals chunks of workers queuing as early as 6am to be absorbed, either for daily or weekly jobs, but never for permanent employment, as the employers only look for cheap labour. These companies are mostly owned by Asians.
Several workers in these organisations have equally suffered one degree of injury or another in the course of discharging their duties. This often leads from minor to permanent disability, and they get no compensation.
Tinuke Fapohunda, in one of her papers entitled ‘Employment Casualisation and Degradation of Work in Nigeria’ published in International Journal of Business and Social Science, said casualisation is gradually becoming a problem in employment patterns across the world.
She wrote: “casualisation of employment had been gaining ground in an unprecedented proportion, intensity and scale. The trend has been largely attributed to the increasing desperation of employers to cut down organisational costs, as casualisation of employment is seen as an appropriate strategy for cost reduction.
“Casual workers occupy precarious positions in the workplace and society; they are effectively a new set of ‘slaves’ and ‘underclass’ in the modern capitalist economy.”
Activists speak
To mark the 2016 Workers’ Day, some civil society groups and activists bared their minds to TheNiche on this disturbing issue of casualisation and outsourcing.
Executive Director of Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) Ibuchukwu Ezike, was emphatic in his response.
“Casualisation is not acceptable anywhere in the world. It is not acceptable by our law. It is an abomination to casualise workers,” he said, blaming the labour movements, particularly NLC and TUC, for the anomaly. “The labour movement is not proactive on this issue and the government is not responsive to the plight of workers.”
Stakeholders in the labour circle, he said, are not ready to fight the cause of the people. “The two labour unions are not determined to fight for workers’ rights. They see casualisation being perpetrated in Nigeria as normal. The expatriates are the worst culprits. They casualise almost every worker in their factory.”
The CLO chieftain charged labour movement to be active, stressing that the companies that are involved in the wicked practice should be called to order, or picketed if need be.
He recalled that CLO as an organisation wrote NLC under the leadership of Abdulwahed Omar on the abuse of human labour and dignity, noting that labour movement was not interested in fighting the cause of workers.
Ezike urged the labour unions and government to leave up to their responsibilities and see that workers’ rights are protected.
“If the NLC is active and the government is also responsive, these things would not happen. People get injured and get sacked without compensation because they are regarded as casual staff. It is appalling. Casualisation is not acceptable anywhere in the world,” he stated.
For Lagos lawyer and rights activist, Ebun Adegboruwa, casualisation is an unfortunate development that was caused by the negligence of the Nigerian labour movement. According to him, there is no law against casualisation and guaranteeing employment.
Adegboruwa attributed the root of casualisation to job-seekers’ desperation to get employed and therefore accept any offer made to them. He pointed out that most of the casual workers were employed to work on daily or weekly bases.
“Ironically in Nigeria, labour is not like what is obtainable in South Africa where the master and servant operate in a conducive labour environment,” Adegboruwa noted.
He hoped that with the change mantra of the present administration, the President with the input of NLC will put in place machinery that will extinguish labour casualisation in Nigeria.
The Executive Director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani, said the labour unions must restate the position of labour on casualisation and also ensure productivity, otherwise employers would recruit people on temporary basis and send them away at will without any benefit.
“NLC and government should sit and work out policy to ensure that workers’ rights are protected and not abused,” he advised.
Felix Fagbohungbe (SAN) said there is no clear provision for the casual worker in the constitution, explaining that casual worker is a terminology that is being used to distinguish a permanent staff from a temporary staff who is employed for a specific period, depending on the terms of contract.
