 Great to have you back here on the breakfast on PLOS TV Africa. A final conversation this morning is about telecommunication workers who are threatening a three-day warning strike over unfair work in practices and of course asking that the government immediately takes steps in order to fix some of these challenges. We are speaking this morning with Mr. Okunu Abdelahi, the general secretary of Texan. Good morning Mr. Abdelahi, thanks for joining us. Good morning to you. I'm glad to be here. Great to have you. Let's understand better what the challenges are with the working conditions, the telecom, your group and of course workers on your body are complaining about. Thank you so much for having me once again. It is quite unfortunate that the telecommunications sector, which happens to be not only the fastest growing sector in Nigeria even as a matter of fact all over the world and the only sector all over the world that is not negatively affected by Coronavirus long term and its fallouts. You realize that while other sectors are suffering enormously as a result of the COVID-19 telecommunications sector rather than the suffering is booming by the day. So as a result of this, unfortunately rather apologies, unfortunately despite the fact that the sector is booming, it's doing very well, you realize that the employers of the people do not appreciate the workers that are laying the golden egg, if you permit me to say. So there are a lot of challenges in the sector the employees are facing. It changes from first and foremost a breach of a freedom of association and the rights to organize. A lot of workers because of the precarious conditions they find themselves, they wish to join the union and as a matter of fact a lot of them are decided to join the union. But the greatest challenge is the resistance from the employers of labour. So anytime you get to meet some of them and the rights to them to inform them about the intent and the willingness and the readiness of the workers to belong to the union, rather than as expected give you the attention to the union and commence the necessary process of finalizing the organizing procedures of the workers to belong to the union. Rather than doing that, they go as far as even threatening, intimidating and now in some instances they lose some of the leaders of these workers in the working in the organizations. So apart from this also, we see that a lot of casualization is going on in the sector, whereby somebody is giving at times a one month contract of employment and this one month contract in many instances it will only be renewed maybe once or twice. Thereafter there is nothing like a renewal and this person or this people, this category of people, they would have got several years of their times in the sector, five years, ten years and a book and the likes like that. And in some instances too, you see where they give two months or three months, the marks are more often, it's one year. So and they hide under what they refer to as outsourcing and I think it is a good item for the lawmakers to look into our laws and think of it with them. The current practice of outsourcing and the subcontracting as they call it in the sector is a no-no, it doesn't, people are the workers. You can imagine a situation whereby you now have several levels of employment in the sector, it gets to a stage that even some workers they don't even know who their real employers are. A vendor for example takes a project from the operators. I've been taking a project which I mean sorry the operators have outsourced to the vendor. The vendor in turn now provide another layer of employment by inviting what they call it now, subcontractors. These subcontractors in turn also now outsource again to another set of people which they refer to as outsourcing companies. And this and the sad thing again is that the rectives come from all of them at the same time, even including the operators. And we see a situation whereby like I earlier mentioned, workers are intimidated. There are a category of workers, the field engineers for example, they don't have any work hours. So as far as they are expected to be on their toes, their phone must be by their side, they can be caught at any point in time and they must never give any excuse whatsoever. In this situation in Nigeria to the way the insecurities of it is very high in this country, they will call them in the middle of the night to go and work. We start provision for security and as a sort of this, a lot of them have been attacked. When they are attacked, anything that before them, they will employ us, they exonerate themselves, they experience it, they don't take responsibility of the attack. A lot of them have been hospitalised. The mega salary they take home is the one they use in taking care of themselves. And as we are saying, there should be a stop to this. Alright, go ahead. Okay, please go on. I was going to ask you, we've heard all the grievances that telecommunication workers have against their employers, you're not allowed to form unions, you're exposed to very hash working conditions. But I wanted to ask, these things that you go through, is there any of them that is not covered in your employment contract with these companies? Apologies, I'm not sure I got the question right. I'm asking you if these things you're mentioning, the challenges you're having currently, if they're not covered in your employment contract? Thank you so much. We remember vividly, I started by saying by certain instances of a case whereby the employers engage in the casualisation of the workers. That means somebody that is giving their one month contracts of employment, and there's no reviewer. It means that every other, what do you call it, benefit that is supposed to be a tattoo to, is taking care of. I mean, it's taking it's taking all the table out correctly for such a person. What that means also is that this person, there's no security of job for this person. This person can leave his home today, get to the office, and the person is told your service is no longer in debt. That is bye-bye because there's no concrete, there's no comprehensive contract of employment in this category of workers in the sector. So how about payment? How about the payment of the salaries? Is it meager? Is it above minimum wage? And does it come as a when do you? Yeah, a very large extent yes, it's above minimum wage. But to equate a minimum wage, minimum wage is not even what we should even be talking about in this circumstance. Because in the first place, those that, the minimum wage itself is what cannot take anybody home. It's supposed to be a living wage, but it's a suffering wage, like a lot of people like to say. So these people find the head more than minimum wage, but when you equate their qualification one and the quantum of the jobs they do, you realize that what they are being given is nothing to write to me about. Like I said, they give, they in about three weeks ago, I stumbled upon a statistics which depicts the highest revenue earning organizations in Nigeria. I tell you top number one of them is a telecommunication organization. This to show you, not even by sector, no oil company in the, in the, in the ranking. This to show you how much is being earned in every day, every, every time by these employers in the sector. So what they, what the income is, is not commensurate with the effort or the work these workers do in the sector. Mr. Blay. Once I have your question, what the workers are earning in telecommunication sector is very mega. It is mega, yes. What is, what is the average salary for some of these workers that you've mentioned? Hey, thank you so much. It depends on what do you call it? The sub-sector, these workers belong to, you know, you have some that are customer service, you have some that are, we call them ISP, Internet Service Providers, you have some that the operators, you understand, then we have some that are vendors, you understand. So the salary scale differ depending on the sub-sector you find yourself. But when you look at this, the list page, you know, the sector, the ISPs and the customer service employees are the list page in the sector. Can you give us a figure, you know, of what it looks like? I tell you there are some of them that they earn as low as 30,000, 35,000 a month, yes. And, you know, this comes without allowances? Yes, it comes without allowances. Okay. Do you think that these private telecom companies have taken advantage of the lack of implementation of Nigeria's labor laws? And have your complaints be put to the ministry of labor and some of these organizations that should stand and represent telecom workers? Okay. Thank you so much. Yes, it is obvious that these people are taking advantage of our labor laws, the loopholes in the labor laws. And I'm seeing this opportunity to reiterate again that the government needs to work on our labor laws. The labor law, as it is today, is not to the favor of the workers. It is to the favors of the employers. Having said this, I would like to say again that a lot of, if you go through our press statements, we give some specific instances where we have challenges with some of these employers. Having had challenges with them, we followed what the law says we should do in terms of, when you look at what do you call it now, trade dispute acts. The first point of call is for you to declare a trade dispute. Once you declare a trade dispute, the next thing you do is to go for a consolation at the ministry of labor. You see a situation whereby, having gone to the ministry, the ministry gives its verdicts at consolation. Rather than for these employers to abide by the consolation, the verdict of the consolation, they went against it and did what suits them. I'll give you an instance. In the case of not care, for example, whereby one of the executives of the union was placed on redundancy. We escalated this issue to the ministry of labor. The ministry of labor was convinced that, yes, we were able to establish a case of victimization against this employee. Apart from that also, the ministry of labor also posited that, yes, any union executive must be the last to go. Such a person cannot be signed under no circumstance, except if, for instance, it is a criminal case, is a criminal issue. Yes, apart from that also, if the company is folding up, or as a case of gross incompetence, and they made this clear to them, and they were informed to retain this employee, that at worst, the least they can do is to transfer him to another department. Immediately, we got back about two days afterwards. What did we see? The employer gave the severance of the employment of this worker. Apart from this also, the ministry of labor also gave a verdict that, as a result of the acquisition of a cattle license by Nokia, that these former cattle license employees should be paid. Even as a matter of fact, it will interest you to know that the condition of service of former cattle license of employees states that, as in case of major acquisition or outsourcing, each of the employees should be paid one month per year of service. I tell you, the ministry of labor gave verdict also in our favor on this issue. What did the management do? The rocks was to inform us that they would not abide by that verdict of the ministry of labor. What was the reason they gave? They said, according to their global offices, where they find them in every country, all over the world, that where they have offices, they never pay to any of the former cattle license employees. And we are saying, are these people telling us that they are bigger, they are greater than our nation? Are they saying that they are bigger than our government, they are bigger than our institutions? We are saying no, no to this. I'll give another instance. In the case of a Huawei technologies engineer limited, we tried as much as possible to establish a branch in that organization. Separate times we tried, separate times they built a brick wall. We escalated these issues not only to the ministry of labor, not only also we escalated to the level of the minister of communications. Minister himself intervened in this matter. Still Huawei technologies is not ready to respect our laws and our government. Apart from that also, they worked as far as sucking some of these workers at the imitation by the ministry of labor. There, we discussed all these issues. The ministry directed that these SAC employees should be reabsorbed. And as a matter of fact, to be fair, to the deputy managing director of the company, he said it was shocking to him that those employees were SAC, that as a matter of fact, rather than being losing any SAC employees, what they planned doing was to employ more workers that he will see to himself. And three with chapter, four with chapter after this meditation, nothing has happened. And we are saying all these multinationals cannot continue to enslave us in our country. Mr. Abdulahi, we hear you and now the Texan saying that they went to him back on a strike. What's the plan for that? Thank you so much. In our first statement, we have made it known to the world that we should be backing on strike. What it simply means is that our workers in the sector will be caught up on to stop work for the period of those three days at the first instance. After that three days, and we see nothing change, either by whatever, once we realize that there is no change, we'll give you a timeline where the relevant orders of the union will sit down again, review the activities and take a necessary action. But in the first instance, the three-day warning strike is such that workers in the sector are not expected to work from tomorrow, which is 16th June 2021. And let's also be clear on what exactly your demands are. So if these demands are not met, then of course you take the further action like you've mentioned. What exactly are your demands? Okay, thank you so much. We've made a lot of demands in our first statement, one of which is that, first and foremost, according to all relevant laws, including ILO conventions, the freedom of association of workers must be respected, must be obeyed by all these employers. And we are going ahead to say, because a lot of them, when you meet with them, they will tell you that yes, they recognize the union, because the trade unions act has said, has compelled them that they should give recognition to unions. We are saying that they should go beyond word of mouth. They should put it into writing, circulate to all the employees, informing them that although there are no circumstances, must they be victimized, intimidated or even assacked as it is sort of their membership of the union. These demands must be met. All of them, they should, as a matter of urgency, write to all their employees, because all these employees, once they have it, they will get to touch with us to tell us that yes, they have been able to do this. Then, apart from that, also, we are also demanding that the sack of all the workers that have been sacked, over this period, we had contention with some of them, they must be respected. Our officer in Nokia that has been sacked should be recorded, should be recorded, first with immediately, without wasting of time. Also, in railway technologies, engineering limited, two of our children engineers that have been sacked must be recorded immediately. And as a matter of fact, they should call us for a meeting and for us to start the procedural agreement and CBA negotiation for our members. So, this is another demand that we are putting forward. Then, apart from this also, we are saying that those of them that have been given one form of inquiry, warning, and a lot of intimidations, the work let us that have been given them, either in form of a query or warning, should be withdrawn immediately. So, these are some of the, what do you call it, these are some of the, some of our demands. I have about 10 of them that I tested and I don't, there is no time, I can go on and take others. Alright, Mr. Abdelahi, your points have been well noted. Your warning strike begins tomorrow till Thursday of June 2021. Yes, three days, three days. So, yes, hopefully we can have, you know, more conversation about that, you know, when the warning strike is over, if stakeholders have called you to negotiate in table, and if there's any progress regarding the working condition of telecommunication workers in Nigeria. Thank you. Thank you. Anytime, we always make ourselves available. Thank you so much for having us. You're welcome. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Abdelahi. This is where we draw the curtains here on the breakfast, talking about, you know, what workers are allegedly going through in the hands of telecommunications operators. And we know this, you know, when you get cheaply, but we'll talk about this even with the NYC, you know, many companies that we know, you know, they simply rely on getting a, you know, a pool of youth co-members. They don't even hire staff, staff anymore. They just use youth co-members year in, year out, and they're able to make money for themselves and exploit that. So yes, these issues exist. And our labour laws need to be put in place. Because I think it's unfortunate that you have a situation where you're having a verdict on matters, and then the plaintiff, you know, choose to refuse to obey those. So that really doesn't sound right to our country. Hopefully we get to hear from the Minister of Labour or from, you know, any of these telcos to hear their own side and understand, you know, why they, you know, according to him, have refused to comply with the directives from the Minister of Labour. You know, it's also great to know, you know, how far, you know, how much, you know, this has affected workers across the country. And yes, you know, every now and then you have someone say, well, I'm a contract staff with this telco or the other, you know, you're only working for two months or for three months. You don't get any of your allowances. You don't get anything. You're given in the banks. It happens in the banks as well. Yeah, absolutely. And so there is definitely a problem, you know, a fundamental problem with our labour laws, a problem with our equipment processes, and, you know, the fact that a lot of companies take advantage of the level of unemployment in Nigeria and people who are willing to do whatever it takes to at least be employed for a while. They take advantage of that and, you know, of course, we become victims of these issues. So we will hope that we can expand the conversation and bring in the Minister of Labour and, of course, you know, representative from these telecommunication companies here in Nigeria. But thanks to O'Connu Abdelahi, he is the General Secretary of the Organization, Tessan, who of course have declared a 3D1 strike. I'm not sure how the strike affects the companies and affects customers. I don't know. Maybe if they're saying that customer service operators are not going to be working, maybe you might have a challenge with your phone line. You'll call the customer care line and no one's picking up. So that really is going to have a lot of effect on the telcos. But that's what it is at the moment. We also spoke about grazing routes in Nigeria and the opposition to it by southern governors and other groups in the country. Do you catch up with us on all social media platforms? It's at PLOS TV Africa. If you missed out on any part of our conversation, my name is Aneta Phidix. Have a great day.