The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has threatened to embark on an indefinite strike over the sacking of 900 employees of the Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company, KADECO.
This comes as the National Electricity Employees, NUEE, issued a February 10 deadline to KADECO to recall all the sacked workers, among others, threatening to escalate the industrial crisis to a national scale.
The KADECO had on Monday sacked no fewer than 900 employees, promising to pay their benefits at no specified date.
NUEE, in a statement by its Acting General Secretary, Dominic Igwebike, stated, “We wish to draw the attention of the company’s management to the fact that embarking on such a massive sack of their staff, who are our members, without recourse to the provision of the company’s conditions of service is an insult to the union and a fragrant violation and disregard of Section 20 of the Nigeria Labour Act, which ‘requires an employer to notify the trade union or workers’ representative of the reasons for and the extent of the redundancy before terminating the employment of its staff on account of redundancy.
“Also, it is a total violation of ILO Convention No. 988, which clearly stipulates the ‘Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining.”
Highlighting the alleged sins of KADECO, before the present industrial crisis, NUEE said, “Your unfair labour practices include no provision of medical services to the workers, disregard of non-implementation of all signed Heads of Agreement with Management, and non-remittance of five years of pension deductions to employees’ retirement savings accounts.
“We demand the KADECO management withdraw these sack letters, rescind its earlier decision, and return to status quo ante and be ready to address all outstanding labour issues in the company with the union through dialogue and the spirit of collective bargaining to avert the looming danger management action has posed to the sector.
“Consequently, if by Monday, February 10, 2025, these sacked workers are not recalled and other pending labour issues are not resolved, we shall have no choice but to escalate our protest against this gross injustice to all the electricity companies across the country.
“Nigerians and the general public are therefore put on notice of the impending crisis, and the management of Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company should be held responsible for anything that will happen to the already fragile state of the electricity sector in the country.”
