The Nigerian National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) on Monday threatened to stop all tanker drivers from lifting and supplying products over the sack of workers by some employers in the industry.
The planned strike is to protest what the leadership of NUPENG described as the unilateral decision of two employers in the oil industry to sack workers without consulting the union.
The employers according to NUPENG include MRS which allegedly sent packing 36 workers and Snepco, a subsidiary of Shell Petroleum Corporation, said to have also sacked 15 of its workers without recourse to the union.
Lagos zonal chairman of NUPENG, Tokunbo Korodo, in an interview on Monday disclosed that union had earlier written to the affected companies, expressing its disagreement with the sack and demanding the reinstatement of the sacked workers.
He said “We had written to them to demand the reinstatement of the sacked workers. The ultimatum given to them expires on Tuesday (Today). If by tomorrow (Wednesday), our demand is not met, we are saying that Nigerians should not hold us responsible for whatever happens”.
The union leader also alleged a fresh plan by Agip Oil to declare redundancy, saying “we are totally opposed to this because they recently carried out similar exercise not quite long”.
He also accused the LFA, a consulting firm to Chevron Nigeria Limited of forcing its workers to belong to the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) as against NUPENG.
According to him, “the affected workers have told the company clearly that they want to belong to NUPENG. So we are at a loss as to why the management is imposing NURTW on them. Nigerians should not hold us responsible for whatever happens if the company remains adamant.”
He explained that although most of the workers affected were drivers, they must appropriately belong to NUPENG, being the union in the industry where they work and not transportation union.
