Private Telecommunications and Communications Senior Staff Association of Nigeria has threatened to disrupt the activities of Huawei Technologies Nigeria if they kept denying workers the right to unionise.
The labour union on Thursday issued a 14-day ultimatum to the management of the company to meet its demands, adding that failure would lead to disruption of telecommunications services across the country.
Speaking at a press conference in Lagos, the General Secretary, PTECSSAN, Okonu Abdulahi, alleged that the companies had resorted to intimidation and harassment of workers for attempting to organise themselves into a labour union.
He accused the management of issuing some workers warning letters to discourage them from exercising their rights to freedom of association, saying the company threatened to sack them.
According to him, it had become the hallmark of the company to make workers perform their duties under duress, adding that the use of foul language on the workers was also prevalent in the organisation.
Abdullahi said, “All our efforts in the past to address all the labour related issues confronting the workers in the company have been rebuffed by its management.
“Ultimate of which is gross disregard and denial of the workers their fundamental right to Freedom of Association as enshrined in Section 40 of the Constitution of the Federal republic of Nigeria as well as Section 12(4) of the Trade Union Act LFN 2004 and ILO Conventions 87 and 98.
“We are reiterating that if our demands are not fully and appropriately complied with by Huawei Technologies Nigeria Limited on or before March 12, 2021, we shall withdraw every guarantee of industrial peace within the company. Sadly, services may be disrupted across the nation throughout networks that Huawei is associated with from midnight of Friday, March 12, 2021.”
Some of the demands of the union, according to the general secretary, are for the company to respect the right of workers to freely join the union and the immediate withdrawal of warning letters and threats issued to the leaders of the workers that tried to form a union.
The association also demanded the employment regularisation of all Huawei causal workers, a stop to continued abuse of expatriate quota policy, provision of personal protective equipment for field engineers and ensuring occupational health and safety measures were in place.
Abdullahi asked for the immediate commencement of discussion and negotiation of Procedural Agreement and Collective Bargaining Agreement with the union of the workers.
