Dura Pack Workers On Strike After Management Paid N8,000 As May Salary
Dura Pack workers embarked on two days (June 8 and 9, 2020) “strike action” over fractional salary paid to them by the management of the company for their May Salary and the demand for unionization.
Workers suspended the strike on June 10, 2020 after management promised to pay the outstanding salary next week, though no written or signed agreement was documented, an act that can give management the opportunity to manoeuvre and possibly default.
The Publicity Secretary of the Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR), Comrade Chinedu Bosah visited the factory to solidarize with workers on June 9, 2020.
National Union of Chemical, Footwear and Non-Metallic Workers (NUCFRLANMPE) also sent some union officials to the factory in solidarity with workers and to meet with the management on June 9, 2020 but as usual the management refused to see the union officials.
Since the disruption of work by COVID-19 pandemic, Dura Pack company was closed in April 2020 and workers were paid N20, 000 (55.5%) out of their monthly salary of N36, 000.
Casuals are paid about N22,000 monthly but in May 2020, workers were paid only N8, 000 even though this time around they worked for seven days. Workers grouse is the meagre N8, 000 that was paid for the Month of May instead of N20, 000 paid the previous month.
Fractional salary is part of the policy embarked upon by most companies including Dura Pack Management; it is brute exploitation that private companies who made huge profit year-in, year-out could not pay two months’ salary in a period of the pandemic.
While workers were paid fractional salaries or no salary during the period of lockdown, the government did not seriously pursue any policy that gives palliative to workers or even regulate workplace policy during the COVID-19 pandemic and the trade unions did not resist the attacks beyond declaratory statements.
Typical of slave factory camps, workers in Dura Pack work from Monday to Sunday every week without any rest days, workers work for 12 hours daily, lack of clear condition of service, poor wage and lack of safety work tools, Salaries are determined arbitrarily as salaries are paid without a defined structure etc.
Management deducts from the meagre salary when workers arrive late to work even for 1 minute. For more than 10 years, the management had resisted workers demand to join the National Union of Chemical, Footwear and Non-Metallic Workers (NUCFRLANMPE).
Most workers at Dura Pack were sacked in 2009 for demanding unionization and that led to strike action. Workers embarked on strike again after a worker, Kenneth Frederick died of electrocution on April 16, 2013, due to lack of safety work tools as an electrician. Due to the poor working condition in the factory, the Industrial-All network of trade unions in Nigeria led a picket of the company on October 7, 2013, wherein the branch union was inaugurated and 7-person leadership was elected.
The management refused to recognize the union and that forced workers to embark on strike on October 11, 2013, that lasted for three weeks and the CDWR played major roles in sustaining this strike action. The union (NUCFRLANMPE) leadership participated fully in the struggle but failed to escalate and deepen the struggle which was responsible for not achieving all the demands except forcing the management to pay small compensation (N7, 000 for every year) to all the workers.
Dura Pack is part of the Lee Group of Companies notorious for operating slave factory camps in Nigeria, though not fundamentally different from what happens in most private companies in Nigeria. It would be recalled that West Africa Rubber Limited situated in Ikorodu is part of the Lee Group and that was the company where 37 Nigerian workers lost their lives because workers on night shift were normally locked up and when the fire broke out on September 16, 2002, workers were trapped and lives were regrettably lost while many workers sustained different degree of burns and injury.
Till this present moment, the management was never sanctioned in any way, the then Lagos State Governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu as well as the Lagos State Government and the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo and the federal government became accomplices in the game to not only cover-up that obvious crime but also to allow the same company management to continue to run the place as a slave camp.
The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR) foresaw this period and has demanded that the trade unions should intervene strongly and concretely by mobilizing workers to resist fractional payment of salary and other attacks.
Workers in Dura Pack and other places are ready to fight but with the absence of a serious trade union leadership ready to lead the struggle, workers are at the mercy of the company owners/management. While the role of the trade union leadership is desirable, in the meantime, the CDWR calls on workers to organize themselves by setting up a workers’ committee to lead the struggle and negotiate on their behalf until the management meets all demands.
The CDWR demands the following: (1) payment of workers full salary in Dura Pack and elsewhere, (2) provision of safe work tools, (3) end to casualization and contract staffing, (4) right to annual and sick leave, (5) improved working conditions, (6) right to unionization should be respected, (7) reduction of work hours from 12 hours to 8 hours. We also call on the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), United Labour Congress (ULC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to unite on a common agenda to mobilise workers to resist fractional salary, casualization, contract staffing, poor working conditions and to unionize workers in factories like Dura Pack where management is resisting unionization.
