From Moses John
Geneva
The federal government yesterday threatened to sanction any financial institution that floated its order on their planned mass retrenchment of workers.
Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, while addressing the 105 session of the International Labour Conference holding in Geneva, Switzerland, said it would be morally wrong for the institutions to sack workers without due process.
Ngige, who is the leader of the delegation to the conference, also frowned upon the situation where some of the financial institutions refused their employees to unionise according to the ILO principles and the Nigeria Labour law.
The Minister, however, vowed to resist any exploitation of Nigerian workers, urging the financial institution to enter into collective bargaining agreement on the matter under context with the unions.
He said: “Any bank worker you remove from work, has about 10 members of family to cater for. We don’t want them to put them into the pull of unemployment like that. It must be negotiated. We did that in the oil industry and we succeeded.
Even if you are going to lay off, there is a way to declare redundancy, there is a process. Section 20 of the labour Act says it. You must call the unions and discuss with them. You don’t just treat them as slaves in their own country and you want us to keep quite. We will go a step further if they continue. We know what to do. After all the banks have the licenses giving by the government; we know what to do. They need to comply. They need to come to the negotiation table. We want them to maintain the status quo. As far as I am the minister of labour, I will protect the interest of workers.”
On the position put forward by Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA), that the right to hire and fire resided with the employer, Ngige said organised private sector NECA is protecting their own interest and that they are a leg of the tripod, nothing stops them from having their own opinion.
The Minister said the same directives were given to unions who threatened to picket the banks not to do so, but wonder why they won’t enter into an agreement with the unions.