The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has revealed that it helped save over
800 bank workers from being dismissed due to coronavirus (COVID-19).
This was made known by the President of the
NLC, Ayuba Waba, while speaking to newsmen on Wednesday at the 2020 World
Decent Work Day.
According to Wabba, more than 400 million
jobs have been lost to the COVID-19 pandemic globally.
“Many employers of labour have latched on this
economic slow-down to vent their venom on poor workers with many workplaces
affecting massive layoffs, retrenchment and retirement,” he said.
“We
would recall upon the first phase of the easing of the lockdown, a bank fired
800 of its staff. The bank was only testing the waters as other banks were
already primed to follow suit. It took the intervention of the Nigeria Labour
Congress to halt the anti-workers purge.
“Through the instrumentality of the Labour Civil
Society Situation Room on COVID-19 which we set up both at the national level
and in all our state councils, Congress wrote strongly worded letters to the
Federal Government, the Central Bank of Nigeria and other regulatory agencies
warning of the dire consequences of offering workers as the sacrificial lamb
during the pandemic.
“We wondered what happened to the surplus profits
realised from the toil and sweat of workers when the going was good. We also
reached out to the employers in the private sector through the auspices of the
Nigeria Employers Consultative Association.
“The fruit of that strategic engagement was the
signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for Job Protection.
“It is gratifying that the Federal Government and
the regulatory agencies listened to the voice of reason and halted the move to
bleed the workforce in Nigeria of thousands of jobs. The Central Bank of
Nigeria placed an embargo on the termination of employment in our banking
sector.”
