Airline explains action says, Union abandoned the workers
A major labour unrest may soon rock the aviation industry in Nigeria following last Friday alleged unilateral sack of 22 out of 26 Nigerians in the employment of East African carrier, Kenya Airways, representing 86.4 per cent of Nigerians on its employment.
An aviation union, National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) has however threatened to picket the operations of the airline over the alleged unilateral disengagement of the workers
However, the airline in its response, though confirmed the sack, but said it was not unilaterally done as alleged by the union,
The airline accused the union of failure to protect the interest of the workers saying NUATE was nowhere to be found when the airline officials from its Nairobi headquarters were in Nigeria to discuss the issue.
African Business Travel News (ABTN) learnt that the affected members of staff were issued the disengagement letters at the airline’s office in Lagos in the presence of stern looking policemen engaged by the airline to scare them away and prevent possible breakdown of law and order.
ABTN also learnt that only four of its Nigerian members of staff are retained by the management of the airline after the purging exercise. Those retained are Country Manager, Mr. Afeez Balogun, the Station Manager, and two other staff.
Our correspondent reported that the affected staff were not fully paid terminal benefits in accordance with the terms of employment and disengagement.
It was learnt that they were given only four weeks wages on disengagement by the management, a situation the industry union insisted was not acceptable to its members.
It was gathered that the unexpected sack of the Nigerian workers happened when the airline was still negotiating the new condition of service with the industry unions.
The source said the carrier’s management took the decision without taking into consideration the Nigeria labour laws, which kicks against unilateral decision by employers when disengaging workers.
It was also learnt that plans have also reached an advanced stage by the management of the airline to replace the sacked workers with casuals as it has already contracted engagement of new workers to a General Sales Agent (GSA) in the country.
General Secretary of the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), Comrade Olayinka Abioye in an interview with our correspondent confirmed the sack of the 22 workers.
Abioye however said that the unilateral sack of the workers by the airline would not be allowed to stand by the industry unions.
He insisted that the sack of the workers was illegal especially at a time the management had reached an agreement to implement some of the reviewed conditions of service for the workers.
He said: “We have been agitating for the review of terms and conditions of employment in Kenya Airways for about two years. We started the process and somewhere along the line, the management of Kenya Airways said they were doing restructuring exercise because of the financial conditions of the airline. In the meantime, we have even agreed to certain reviews approved by both parties and only waiting for implementation.
“That was one of the reasons we embarked on the picketing we did last December. Then, after the picketing, we were invited and we concluded the review after the review, we discovered that our Nigerian staff were being owed about 26 months monetary benefits. They claimed that they won’t be able to pay all, but after the consultations, we agreed for 16 months to be paid the workers.
“In between, they introduced a new shift into the discussion, saying that going forward they want to replace all business plans with new business plans called General Sales Agent (GSA), which means they want to engage a travelling agency to handle the ticket sales and reservation and all the workers would be sacked.
“We as unions, didn’t like that and we expressed our dissatisfaction and they said it was not just only Nigeria that would be affected, but throughout the continent. Then, we just said we have formed a consortium of GSA so that the workers would still be retained, but they informed us that we were too late and as they have engaged another GSA already.”
He explained further that the unions had informed the Director-General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Capt. Muhtar Usman of its intent to picket the operations of the airline any moment from now.
He emphasised that the attention of the Minister of State for Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika would also be drawn to the action of the airline and the decision to be taken by the unions.
He, however, said that the unions would jointly hold a congress on the issue in Lagos on Monday, saying the outcome of the congress would determine the next line of action to be taken by the unions, but insisted it would not accept shabby treatment of Nigerian workers by any organisations.
According the airline several attempts to hold a meeting with the unions on the planned redundancy of some of the workers were made, but the union didn’t honour the invitation even when some of its officials came from Nairobi, Kenya.
A letter from Kenya Airways dated April 11, 2018, sent to the General Secretary of the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE). It the airline as at January 15, 2018, copy of which was made available to ABTN, notified the union of its redundancy plan and called for a meeting with the airline, which the union refused to honour.
According to the letter, NUATE had picked different dates including February 15, 2018, February 26, 2018, March 6, 2018, March 16, 2018, and April 5, 2018 for a meeting with Kenya Airways, but failed to honour any of the dates.
