NUPENG threatens strike action over Chevron workers’ crisis

The Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) on Monday issued a seven-day ultimatum to the Federal Government on the unresolved issues affecting Chevron contract workers over alleged anti-labour practices, with a threat to embark on a nationwide strike action.

The union in a statement made available to the media and signed by Igwe Achese, its president, said, “if the Federal Government fails to intervene in the unresolved anti-labour practices of Chevron at the expiration of the seven-day ultimatum,” it would commence a national-wide strike action immediately.

The union added that it had watched with keen interest the resolution reached with the Union, Chevron and the Federal Ministry of Labour and yet there was an ongoing termination of the jobs of our members.

It alleged that despite the intervention of the federal ministries of labour and petroleum resources, “Chevron and its labour contractors have not deemed it fit to honour the resolutions reached at all its meetings.”

NUPENG added that some of the unresolved issues include job categorisation of its members who had workers as contract staff for over 25 years. “But Chevron Nigeria Limited in their bid to deplete the numerical strength of NUPENG introduced an obnoxious criteria of using remuneration to determine which union the contract workers should belong to in the company,” it said.

Other issues include the massive retirement of our members by the management of the various Chevron Labour Contractors without due process.

The union further stated that some of the workers transited from the former six contractors to the new 16 contractors, and were not paid their full entitlements as documented by NAPIMS, and other were therefore short paid.

NUPENG added that all agreements reached with the Federal Ministry of Labour were reneged by Chevron and that they even refused to appear in a meeting convened by the group managing director of the NNPC in Abuja last week.

The union alleged that the company had begun secret recruitment of workers in order to phase out NUPENG members, and that would be resisted at all cost.