By Folasade Folarin
Funke Alabi has been working in a bank as a contract employee for the past four years and she is now getting apprehensive about what the future holds for her.
She does not know if her contract with the bank will be renewed or not and even if the contract is renewed, her salary will not be better than what it is now in any case.
Alabi has struggled endlessly to ensure that her employer converts her employment to a permanent one but her aspiration seems to be a mirage.
To make matters worse, the bank’s often threatens its entire contract staff with termination of appointment at any given opportunity.
Alabi and her colleagues are quite eager to secure good jobs with better conditions elsewhere but since such jobs are not within their reach, they are compelled to make do with their current occupation, although the working conditions are unpalatable.
The unemployment situation in Nigeria is quite grim, as millions of graduates roam the streets every year without the hope of getting jobs, whether in the public or private sector.
After many years of joblessness, the hapless jobseekers will gladly accept with gratitude any kind of job that comes their way.
The dream of an average undergraduate is to come of school and secure a very good job but the dearth of employment, coupled with frustration, has compelled many graduates of tertiary institutions to take up jobs which are sometimes demeaning.
Many companies and organisations also take undue advantage of the unemployment situation to keep people working under unpalatable conditions.
This has given rise to casualisation of labour or contract employment, thereby compelling people to work without receiving wages that are commensurate to the work done and any entitlements whatsoever.
The disparity between the wages of casual and permanent workers is so wide, and casual workers are often treated like second-class citizens.
Casual workers are not entitled to pension, housing fund, national health insurance scheme, bonuses or profit sharing, while their salaries are often slashed arbitrarily.
Banks, hotels, construction companies, telecoms firms, oil companies, foreign companies and manufacturing companies are the major establishments which engage in recruiting contract staff.
Even casual employees with solid qualifications, which could even be better than those of the permanent staff, are made to operate as subordinates, while working extra hours for lesser pay.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines casuals as “workers who have an explicit or implicit contract of employment which is not expected to continue for more than a short period, whose duration is to be determined by national circumstances.
“These workers may be classified as being employees or own-account workers, according to the specific circumstances of the employment contract.’’
Tinuke Fapohunda, in her paper on “Employment Casualisation and Degradation of Work in Nigeria’’ published in International Journal of Business and Social Science, said that casualisation was gradually becoming a problem in employment patterns across the world.
She noted that in Nigeria, casualisation of employment had been gaining ground in an unprecedented proportion, intensity and scale. [eap_ad_1] “The trend has been largely attributed to the increasing desperation of employers to cut down organisational costs; as casualisation of employment is seen as an appropriate strategy for cost reduction.
“Casual workers occupy precarious positions in the workplace and society; they are effectively a new set of `slaves’ and `underclass’ in the modern capitalist economy,’’ Fapohunda added.
However, contract employment and casualisation of labour contravene Section 7 (1) of the Labour Act, Cap 198, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990.
The law provides that “not later than three months after the beginning of a worker’s period of employment with an employer, the employer shall give the worker a written statement, specifying the terms and conditions of employment.’’
The conditions “include the nature of the employment and if the contract is for a fixed term, the date when the contract expires.”
Describing contract employment and casualisation of labour issue as worrisome, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) says it has kicked against the practice repeatedly but with little progress.
Mr Nasir Kabir, NLC’s organiser on anti-casualisation, said that banks often employed casual workers because of the obvious desperation of young people who were in dire need of a means of livelihood.
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