CASUALISATION + OUTSOURCING = SLAVE LABOUR
Evan Molokwu graduated six years ago from one of the Nigerian Universities. After a long search for a job, which was never available, he decided to enroll with one of the private contract firms, which fixed him up with a factory work and received peanuts for his hard labour. He had to part with substantial part of his salary to the job resource outfit. After six years of working in the company, Molokwu remains a casual and hence has no right to any benefit from the company.
Olu Akodu, also a Higher National Diploma (HND) graduate, could not secure a casual job with his higher diploma from one of the banks in the country, which outsourced to a firm to secure Ordinary National Diploma (OND) qualified personnel for them. The idea was to pay the workers peanuts despite subjecting them to strenuous work conditions and targets. He has been working for four years and never rewarded according to his qualification, which he has been advised could not be accepted by the organisation as he never applied with it in the first instance. Just like Molokwu, he had to part with some of his take home to the contracting firm.
Another pathetic case is that of a young man, who worked as a casual with one of the leading oil firms in the country. According to report the young man (name withheld) had worked for more than a decade for the oil firm but now on the run for his life. The company is allegedly threatening him for seeking their help to overcome his terminal ailment, which happened as a result of an accident he suffered while at work on the company's premises. This is the second time he has been through a grueling experience on official duty and each time the company simply neglected his plight because he is a contract staff. Currently, he is diagnosed with a complication that could become cancerous as a result of the accident.
Besides the above scenario, a visit to the industrial area in any part of the country reveals chunks of factory workers queuing as early as 6am at the entrances of these companies, mostly owned by Indians, Lebanese, and Chinese to be absorbed, either for daily or weekly appointment but never for permanent employment as the employers are only looking for cheap labour. Workers in these companies worked between 10-12 hours daily as most resume as early as 7a.m and close about 6-7pm.
Several workers in these organisations have equally suffered one degree of injury or the other in the course of discharging their duties and responsibilities. This often ranges from minor to permanent disability, which has forced some of these workers out of jobs prematurely and without adequate compensation for the victims by the culpable organisation. Collins English Dictionary defined casualisation as the altering of work practices so that regular workers are re-employed on a casual or short-term basis.
From Latin America to Asia, South Africa to Indonesia, there seems to be no country, which is not guilty of casualising their workforce, though under different guises. According to a report by International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers (ICEM), the casualisation report across all sectors worldwide was damning. ICEM General Secretary, Manfred Warda, used his plenary address to the 100th session of the ILO's International Labour Conference on June 8 to denounce the labour practices of Swiss multinational, Holcim, specifically against contract workers at two cement plants in India.
Holcim subsidiaries, ACC in Jamul and Ambuja Cement Limited in Rawaan, were accused of blatantly violating Indian labour legislation. The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act of India stipulates that contract workers may only be hired to perform non-core functions and that those who perform the same or similar kinds of work as regular workers must receive equal treatment in terms of wages and conditions. However, contract workers in both plants are employed to carry out tasks, which are fundamental to production but receive only one third of permanent workers' wages.
The ICEM General Secretary also made clear that it was incumbent on the ILO to urgently address the trend towards precarious employment relationships that are undermining the effectiveness of ILO Conventions 87 and 98 for workers around the globe. Also at BASF India's Mangalore plant, 300 out of the 420 workers in the company are contract workers. The contract workers are employed by 10 different agencies, which operate in the plant. Six years ago, there were only permanent workers working on the production line and no contract workers. Now there are even contract workers on the production line, working the same jobs as permanent workers.
In South Africa, Christina Olivier, Vice President, National Union of Metalworkers, revealed that contract and agency work was one of the big challenges for trade unions. He noted that his union had demanded that government should ban labour brokers as the percentage of contract and agency work had gone up. 'Workers are exploited in a big way - because they are not employed by the primary employer, they receive less benefits. They are easy to dismiss - a broker is just told to take that worker off my premise. An argument against the use of labour brokers is that they are a form of modern day slavery. They are the worst kinds of exploitation.'
In Indonesia, casuals working in PT Cussons in Tangerang, confirmed that contract workers had to pay between one million and three million rupiah to get a job at Cussons but there is no evidence who receives this money. Contract workers are under pressure from the company. They cannot take sick leave as they are afraid that their contracts will be stopped
In the contract worker job agreement, Article eight says that during the contract, the casual cannot be married or become pregnant, otherwise such must resign, while under Indonesian law resignation means no severance pay. In late 2010, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation (ITGLWF) carried out research into working conditions in 83 sportswear-producing factories in Asia, together employing over 100,000 workers. One key finding of the research was that Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) is being routinely used by employers in the industry as a way to evade employment responsibilities.
On March 8, to coincide with International Women's Day, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) released a report, exploring the gender dimensions of the increasing move towards contract, agency and other types of precarious work. Entitled 'Living with Economic Insecurity,' the report analyses global employment trends, including the global economic crisis, and concludes that the crisis has had a particularly far-reaching but under-acknowledged effect on women. This has been exacerbated by the fact that women are over-represented in insecure forms of employment.'
Here in Nigeria, the US Solidarity Centre recently released a report, detailing the Nigerian oil industry's shift from permanent, direct employment towards outsourced and temporary labour. The report argues that the casualisation of labour is industry-wide and is a clear attempt to reduce the cost of doing business while simultaneously breaking workers' strength.
The Solidarity Centre engaged with leaders and members of the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) to examine industry trends and their impact on workers' lives. A key trend, highlighted by almost every programme participant, was the degeneration of permanent employment and the increasing casualisation of labour.
According to NUPENG and PENGASSAN, for every full-time oil worker, there are four casual workers. The unions argue in the report that the shift away from permanent employment is an attempt to replace unionised employees with lower paid and less protected workers as well as to transfer employment responsibilities to subcontractors.
Casual workers perform the same tasks as permanent workers, but without any job security and under 'never-ending probation.' They are frequently laid off, particularly just before they would become entitled to permanent contracts. Most casual workers are not union members. They receive lower wages – the report estimates between 15-50 per cent of union workers' wages - and fewer benefits.
More and more, multinational companies, as well as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its subsidiaries, are using non-direct and contract workers to perform key functions in Nigeria's oil and gas industries as well as other manufacturing sectors of the economy. Last year, about 400 staff were retrenched from Cadbury Nigeria Plc.; Nigeria Bottling Plc. laid off over 300; Seven-Up Plc., Floor Mills and Promasidor equally sent home substantial number of their workforce to give way for contract staff.
The excuse of the management of these organisations had been that the workers being laid off did not belong to the organisations' core business, hence would rather contract out such responsibility to a professional.
The Executive Director of Seven Up Plc., Mr. Femi Mokikan, also argued that the company engaged in outsourcing as a last resort to save the company from financial crisis due to the state of the economy in the country, which has forced most of the companies in the manufacturing sector to close down.
The proliferation of such employment - referred to as casualisation in Nigeria has meant that many companies have completely done away with full-time junior staff or blue-collar workers in their employ. One example is Mobil Producing Nigeria, a subsidiary of the world's largest energy concern, ExxonMobil, which has completely phased out NUPENG members in favour of contract staffing. Casualisation in Nigeria is synonymous with cheap labour and maximisation of profits.
The common fact is that when companies phase out full-time staff, they re-surface as short-term contract workers where rights to Freedom of Association are limited, their social entitlements are curtailed, and career paths become vague or non-existent. For over a decade, casualisation of workers has been a major cause of industrial conflict in Nigeria. Organised labour has had to picket many work places to exert pressure on managements to review the employment status of casual workers.
The banking, oil and manufacturing sectors are largely characterised by this phenomenon. Casual workers are often exposed to industrial accidents without a safe work environment. The Nigerian Labour Congress, (NLC), and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the two central labour organisations in the country, have led workers' struggles against the practice, using the options of strike and picketing in an effort to force concessions from management. The non-unionisation of contract staff is likewise a sore point in labour relations. Increasingly, casual labour and non-unionization issues are becoming pervasive challenges. Casual workers and contract staff in various companies had agitated for conversion to permanent employment for several years to no avail.
The National President of the Chemical and Non-Metallic Products Senior Staff Association (CANMPSSA) and National Trustee TUC, Comrade Abdul Gafar Mohammed whose union has lost substantial numbers to this recent menace in the world of work stated emphatically that casualisation is more terrible than unemployment, as it only provides short term relieve.
'Casualization is evil, worst than unemployment, an unemployed is free but a casual is limited in freedom. Anywhere we find it, we confront it headlong. In most cases the workers themselves are intimidated by their managements and in such instance we go in to give management ultimatum and we have achieved quite a lot in confronting the menace.
Comrade Lateef Oyelekan, National President of the National Union of Food Beverage and Tobacco Employees (NUFBTE) likewise condemned the trend by the employers in the Food sector who had made the union lost almost a thousand of its members under the pretence of operating under harsh economic condition, only to turn around to contract jobs of the sacked workers to brokers. 'All workers, whether full-time workers or those employed by contractors performing tasks for primary employers, deserve set conditions of work, rights and privileges, and certainty in career paths in order that they know they have secure futures', he stated.
A spokesman of the Trade Union Congress, Mr. Jerry Amah, however is of the view that although many workers are simply slaving and wasting away due to the casual status imposed by their jobs, most of them are scared of walking away from the slave labour conditions in which they find themselves, owing to the high unemployment rate and economic uncertainty in the country.
While owners of most multinational organisations 'import' their foreign brothers into the country to take up full time employment with all the stipulated benefits attached, they, however, find it more rewarding to place the Nigerian workers on contract in order to deny them the benefits attached to the job. Apart from the fact that this has increased the rate of capital flight in the country, it also renders the citizens, who are supposed be the major beneficiaries of such investment impoverished and completely hopeless.
Much as the NLC has tried to stem the anti-labour practice through picketing and other measures as allowed by the law, the Federal Government has actually been passively concerned about the development. Even with a promise to ensure workers in the country are given their due, the Federal Government can only promise to reduce the monster called casualisation rather than putting a stop to it completely.
During one of the meetings with the leadership of the NLC and the Trade Union Congress, the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu, charged them to make inputs to the Federal Government's campaign to eradicate casualisation and other forms of exploitation of workers by some foreign and local employers of labour.
Wogu reminded the NLC President, Mr. Abdulwaheed Omar, and the President of TUC, Mr. Peter Esele, that President Goodluck Jonathan's administration had demonstrated its interest in workers welfare through the constitution of a number of committees on workers' issues. Though the Ministry of Labour had actually instituted a committee on the casualization, which had hitherto submitted its report, labour and Nigerians are still awaiting the implementation of the committee report and only hope that it will not go the way of several reports initiated by the government in the past.
Mr. Segun Oshinowo, director general of Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) had also charge federal government to enact a law that will make it impossible for employers of labour to casualise workers noting that many employers use casualisation to dehumanise their employees. Oshinowo who stated this at an interactive forum with Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) recently in Lagos noted that most employers deliberately casualise workers to deprive them of benefits, insisting that the government should do well to terminate casualisation of workers as the trend has impoverished rather than enrich a lot of Nigerian workers.
At international level, a plan of action to combat outsourcing in Latin America was agreed at the regional Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) seminar held in April this year in Mar del Plata, Argentina. It was agreed that outsourcing has a detrimental impact in all countries, and that coordinated action is needed to stop its increase. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) likewise has adopted updated Guidelines for Multinational Companies. The new OECD Guidelines were adopted on 25 May at a signing ceremony led by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and attended by AFL-CIO and TUAC President Richard Trumka.
The update contains a number of positive elements, including a chapter on Human Rights and the unequivocal application of the Guidelines to suppliers and other business relationships. The Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) statement on the update of the guidelines states: 'These elements significantly increase the relevance of the Guidelines and their potential to raise the standard of responsible business conduct in a global context. The success of the Update now depends on its prompt and full implementation both by adhering governments and by the OECD.'
The updated Guidelines have particular relevance to Contract and Agency Labour as the coverage extends to those 'in an employment relationship with the multinational enterprise.' The commentary to Chapter Five on Employment and Industrial Relations clarifies that the terminology is consistent with that used in the ILO Multinational Enterprises' Declaration and refers enterprises wishing to understand the scope of their responsibility under Chapter Five to the non-exhaustive list of employment relationship indicators set forth in ILO Recommendation 198 of 2006, paragraphs 13 (a) and (b). Paragraph 13 of R198 states that the indicators of the existence of an employment relationship might include:
(a) the fact that the work: is carried out according to the instructions and under the control of another party; involves the integration of the worker in the organization of the enterprise; is performed solely or mainly for the benefit of another person; must be carried out personally by the worker; is carried out within specific working hours or at a workplace specified or agreed by the party requesting the work; is of a particular duration and has a certain continuity; requires the worker's availability; or involves the provision of tools, materials and machinery by the party requesting the work;
(b) periodic payment of remuneration to the worker; the fact that such remuneration constitutes the worker's sole or principal source of income; provision of payment in kind, such as food, lodging or transport; recognition of entitlements such as weekly rest and annual holidays; payment by the party requesting the work for travel undertaken by the worker in order to carry out the work; or absence of financial risk for the workers.
However, more is still expected of the organised labour centres in dealing with casualisation challenge, including the use of legitimate protests. Furthermore, the federal and state authorities should invoke appropriate labour and industrial laws to discourage and reduce casualisation in the economy. The practice violates existing laws in Nigeria and international conventions on labour.
The civil society organizations should collaborate with the organised trade unions to situate the casualisation question more effectively in the wider public domain, and exert pressure on the National Assembly to revisit the issue and enact appropriate laws to offer more protection to Nigerian workers.