MTN accused of slave wages, unlawful termination of appointments



— 01 August 2012

News

The poor working conditions and unlawful termination of appointments have compelled the MTN Jos Call Centre Staff Union, Larger House (Plateau Youth Council) and other pressure groups to call on relevant regulatory agencies to investigate the MTN.



The groups alleged that the telecommunication giants rather than cater for their workers, ensured that slave wages were paid to them.

They have also called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to immediately intervene in the imbroglio as the telecommunication agency is trying to cover the economic sabotage.

According to the groups,  since commencement of operations, the management has resorted to using subterranean tactics to suppress them ranging from short-paying of employees, dehumanising conditions of service, hire and fire at will and unlawful termination of appointment. No fewer than 4000 workers were employed in 2010 but now trimmed to about 1,700 workers before they were finally terminated on Monday.

Addressing a press conference yesterday at the Nigeria Union of Journalist (NUJ) Press Centre, Jos, Chairman, National Union of Postal and Telecommunication (NUPTE) MTN Jos Call Centre, Paul Afolabi, in the midst o other comrades, posited that due to the lingering crises, the intervention and picketing of the Jos Centre by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Plateau Council, on March 14, this year, led to the formation of workers’ union, which was earlier banned, and the signing of a collective bargaining agreement among the management, the NLC and the union, the content of which was unfortunately not honoured and implemented by the management of the Communication Network Support Services Limited (CNSSL).

According to Afolabi, rather than honouring the agreement, the management embarked on an open campaign and propaganda discouraging workers from belonging to the union.

“The non-compliance of employees to these cheap propaganda was met with all sorts of harassment and intimidation. This is evident by the gun-point arrest and detention of union officials who were deceitfully invited for negotiation at the Administrative Office in Rayfield, Jos,” he stated.

He said, “Our request as a union has been the call on management to harmonise our salaries with those of Kaduna, Kano, Lagos and Ilorin Call Centre Operations. A confirmed staff at any of these call centres has a minimum of salary of N96,000 per month and works for less hours (16 days and four nights) compared to us in Jos (after confirmation in Jos our salary is N37,000) with more working hours (18days and five nights). At these call centre operations, a monthly airtime of N6000 worth is given to employees, staff buses and available, sleeping mattresses during night shifts, public holiday allowances are being paid and staff are promoted based on performance but none of these are applicable in MTN Jos Call Centre Operations.

“Stagnation is the order of the day as no promotion or salary review was made for more than two years, until the recent intervention by NLC. We the affected staff have been at home for over three months now without pay.”

He lamented that instead of opening window for negotiation to enable them to resume work, the management kept itself busy by sending threatening messages to workers to resume work without any improved condition of service.

Afolabi said that many revelations came to the fore during their complaints to the Plateau State of Assembly when the talked about the disparity in salary between MTN Jos call centre and other MTN call centres which are managed by the same CNSSL, adding that the CNSSL management has not been remitting consistently the correct amount of tax deducted from staff salaries, while at the same time skipping some months without remitting to the Plateau State Board of Internal Revenue.

He also alleged that the CNSSL management has not been remitting the pension deductions made from staff salaries to the appropriate Pension Fund Administrators, stressing that the management has been deducting a whooping sum of N100,000 per year on every member of staff since inception without proper National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in place.

The NUPTE chairman maintained that when the representative of MTN came to Jos recently and demanded to know the goings-on because the CNSSL management has tagged all the workers as violent, aggressive branding the entire Plateau as unsafe for business investments, he told him that the claim was not true.

He bemoaned the pathetic situation where, on July 26, the entire workforce of CNSSL received termination letters from their management, doing away with over 1,700 workers on grounds of redundancy.

On the final note, the workers who carried placards with various inscriptions at the NUJ yesterday, urged NLC, Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), EFCC, Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity, National Assembly, Plateau House of Assembly, MTN Nigeria, Security Agencies in the state, Federal Ministry of Communication, Plateau State Governor and NUPTE to intervene in their plight.

On Monday, on hearing the withdrawal of the license of the CNSSL by MTN Nigeria which also signaled the termination of appointment of the contract workers, the NLC chairman in the state, Comrade Jibrin Bancir, told them that he was going to take up the issue with the appropriate quarters.

Source

http://scannewsnigeria.com/news/mtn-accused-of-slave-wages-unlawful-termination-of-appointments/