IN this conversation held via telephone on September 29, 2021, Comrade Mike Olanrewaju, who has been in acting capacity as General Secretary of the National Union of Food Beverage and Tobacco Employees (NUFBTE) until he was confirmed a few days ago at the meeting of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the union held on October 15, 2021, speaks on the redundancy exercise carried out in Nigerian Breweries Plc, Seven-Up Bottling Company Ltd and Dufil-Deunited Foods Industry Limited, makers of Indomie, responding to the allegation that the leadership of the union orchestrated the exercise that led to the sacking of about 600 workers in the food sector since May 2021.
He also offers insight on the situation of casual workers in the food industry and the allegation that the union is collecting check-off dues from casual workers without rendering any service to them. Excerpts:
National Record (NR): We are doing a story on the redundancy in Nigerian Breweries Plc, Seven-Up Bottling Company Ltd. and Dufil-Deunited Foods Industry Limited. We gathered that the exercise was done at the behest of your union; please what is the reaction of your secretariat to that allegation?
Mike Olanrewaju: It is not true! For Nigerian Breweries, in fact, they applied to us in accordance with the provisions of the law; they intimated us about their plans to carry out restructuring across their plants across the country. I remember they wrote to us [about their intention to do so].
You see, ordinarily, I think you know that the law permits them, and they have to just inform us on the extent of their plan and we have to look at it. Our union has been very, very meticulous for some time; in fact, I can say since the inception of this administration that we now use the opportunity to negotiate even far above what is contained in the collective bargaining agreement. The law recognises that the company that wants redundancy should pay three months’ in lieu of notice.
There is a collective bargaining agreement on redundancy too, which spells out redundancy pay for every staff depending on the number of years; it is graduated; the number of years served and the amount to be paid for the length of service. The other one is gratuity, which is similar but whichever one that is higher.
But we have in our sector, like the Nigerian Breweries and Nestle; these two companies stand out with very progressive exit packages. It is supposed to be mutually exclusive, redundancy pay or gratuity but these companies used to pay the two together.
You can’t believe it that in Nigerian Breweries, as we talk now, if a staff is leaving Nigerian Breweries today, apart from the three months in lieu of notice that they will pay, both redundancy pay and gratuity, again, our negotiated ex gratia which is usually on basic salary; but now, Nigerian Breweries pays 27 months; that is two years and three months, just as goodwill; Coca-Cola is 37 months, WACO is about 27 months, and Guinness too.
For Nigerian Breweries, they made request for redundancy; they did last in 2019. All of us know what is going on in the country. Our union has been very reluctant, but as you know, the law does not permit us to actually say no, but we had said we will not allow it.
I remember we were going to Abuja visiting the Ministry of Labour on this matter. They [Nigerian Breweries] had been on our neck to say that they wanted this matter of redundancy to be concluded by July when they wrote to us, I have the letters they wrote to us, they are in the office; they clearly showed they had wanted this redundancy since but we had stalled them until they began to beg us that the situation they were going through, and that in fact they were operating at a loss and so on. Eventually, after a month or so, we started discussion with them.
After the discussion, we had about three meetings with them. We have what is called ex gratia; apart from redundancy pay or gratuity, ex gratia is an extra money or goodwill. We had argued that all our members joined the company with the intention of serving until they retire and that if they have to exit the company without any fault of theirs contrary to their expectation, and we made them to know that most of the staff had used their active years and as such they needed to be compensated, in addition to provision for gratuity and redundancy pay.
This is on record and you can find out. There is no other union in this country that I know, and you can find out, that has negotiated and reached agreement for its members on ex gratia from redundancy. But we have started it. It is only our union that has such arrangement for her members that are leaving a company. We have started and it is so unique that in every company, like in Indomie that has not been doing redundancy regularly, they are not used to it unlike Coca-Cola and Nigerian Breweries, Cadbury; these are companies that in fact carry out redundancy like Sunday, Sunday lesson. So in those companies, what we do is that in every new redundancy, we ask for extra three months basic salary in addition to whatever they had done before…
You can’t believe it that in Nigerian Breweries, as we talk now, if a staff is leaving Nigerian Breweries today, apart from the three months in lieu of notice that they will pay, both redundancy pay and gratuity, again, our negotiated ex gratia which is usually on basic salary; but now, Nigerian Breweries pays 27 months; that is two years and three months, just as goodwill; Coca-Cola is 37 months, WACO is about 27 months, and Guinness too.
Usually, it is the union that says union officials should not be included in redundancy. We sometimes say this when we sense that there could be some foul play against a union leader, we will ensure that they should not touch any union person; in that case, it will be stated there but if we don’t see there is need for that, it will not be there. Incidentally, on Nigerian Breweries, it was included, that no union person should be affected and management has been following it.
You know, the more they do; we want to discourage redundancy at all cost, but we cannot stop it. So for most of them, problem has been there even though there is no law backing it up, but the problem has been there, and we have been following it up meticulously. So, that is why, by the end of the day when there is redundancy, in fact, most of the people that go; because we are concerned with redundancy, unlike some other industrial unions, anybody that will go on redundancy, we don’t take one naira from their total severance package but some other unions will still ensure that they deduct union dues from their total package but we don’t take one naira; we excuse them from paying anything out of their total package and we negotiate as if our life depended on it.
So on the issue of the Nigerian Breweries, in fact, they felt that we were holding them by the jugular, and they finally agreed.
In the redundancy agreement for Nigerian Breweries, it was clearly stated that “No union officials will be affected by the exercise;” but contrary to this clause, we gathered that the Unit Chairman and Secretary of Nigerian Breweries’ Ota Plant were affected by the exercise? What did the union say to the management about this?
Olanrewaju: Usually, it is the union that says union officials should not be included in redundancy. We sometimes say this when we sense that there could be some foul play against a union leader, we will ensure that they should not touch any union person; in that case, it will be stated there but if we don’t see there is need for that, it will not be there. Incidentally, on Nigerian Breweries, it was included, that no union person should be affected and management has been following it.
However, you and I know, you see, most of what is happening is that because of the humongous pay that is attached; you can imagine if somebody is to go now, he will be getting 27 months extra pay, just for nothing in addition to other benefits that we negotiated like products, medical service to be extended for three months or six months or one year, those things are there.
So, at that time, when I discovered that the Unit Secretary and Chairman of Ota, if you happen to know them or anybody that knows them, ask them; they, on their own volition opted to be included in the redundancy and we are always very, very flexible on that even though we had included in our agreement that clause.
If some staff said they want to go, we will have no option. If it is a union leader that wanted to go, we don’t make haste to allow it. So, that was exactly what happened. The Chairman and the Secretary deliberately put their names; they didn’t even report; it was later when our State Secretary told us, and we wanted to call them to ask what happened so that we can take it up with the management that they now said it was them that opted to be included. You can confirm that; that was what happened, that is for Nigerian Breweries.
On Seven-Up, Seven-Up by our record, the last redundancy was 2015. When [Comrade Peter] Onoja was their Branch Chairman and even until he joined National [leadership], they had made several moves towards carrying out redundancy.
So, the question of saying the redundancy was at our behest was in fact very outrageous and laughable. How can the union go to the managements and ask for redundancy? Yes, we have issues and challenges in the system, but apart from Seven-Up where [Comrade Peter] Onoja comes from, there are some other companies that redundancies have not been carried out. Why don’t we go there and ask them to do redundancy there too since they (agitators) have members there? That is not true!
Like Coca-Cola now, the management has been making moves, which we disagreed with; of course, God has been helping us that we have been having our way most of the time. Meanwhile for Seven-Up, there are some workers like the forklift drivers and some other workers whose roles have been outsourced to companies that supply vehicles. Because of our resistance, some of these workers whose roles have been outsourced have been idle because we refused to have redundancy discussion until now.
If you see the agreement we had with Seven-Up, we insisted that…you know, they are bringing in new machines; you know, this is an era of artificial intelligence; so many things are happening, and some of the workers, they are un-trainable because they have served for so long, may be because of their level of education or because they are biased in education, they couldn’t fit in and we put it under that law that they will recruit very competent and technically qualified people which, as I am speaking with you, they have started complying with. Because of this, we cannot stop them from moving them out of the company, but of course we agreed with them on the number of those affected but it was not at our own prompting.
The benefits the company paid to most of them that were affected; they had to give them extra six months as against the previous ex gratia which was five months. That is, the statutory three months plus the six months making it nine months. Before, everything was six months; that is three months for statutory and three for ex gratia. Like I said, this time, they had to add extra six months so that all those affected by the redundancy will get at least one year basic salary as goodwill pay, and that was what happened.
In the case of Indomie, we have a protracted case in the industry. Most of the companies, you know, their management would always want to exploit at every given opportunity. So, they would always want to be exiting workers saying that they didn’t meet their appraisal, but these are staff that have been doing well, that have gotten promotion but suddenly, they would want to sack them, but we said we will never take such a thing.
Because we have studied the laws regarding redundancy, there are so many tactics regarding it; it is either new machines or some workers are no longer productive; just anything that will make workers redundant. In all of these, we said no, you cannot do that. In fact, they were about to give termination letters to some of them for non-performance but we kicked against that. If we had allowed that, if the branch had not cried out to us, we wouldn’t have known, they would have just gone like that, but thank God they cried on time.
The management came, they wanted to do analysis for us but we said no. Even Cadbury and some other companies, we had it tough with them last year, including Promasidor. We said we cannot allow exit through appraisal. If you know staff who have worked all their life, toiled day and night to contribute to make the company what they are, then it is better they can be declared as redundant so that they can be paid for the period they had served and not to be simply exited through termination which will look as if they are criminals.
So, we told them, Indomie for some time has not been doing well, we all know what is going on; we are all in the same industry; we know how they are having it tough and rough; every company. We are very careful not to…even when they say they want to do redundancy, we said they cannot.
So, if they say they want to do redundancy, those people, they cannot go like that, so eventually they said they wanted to do redundancy, so they negotiated and of course, they had to pay extra six months. The people that were given letters before were given one month’s notice each, not even the three months statutory notice. But in the redundancy negotiation, we had to get three months’ notice for them and another six months which is ex gratia. That is instead of one month’s notice; we now got nine months’ notice which is extra eight months in their basic salary. And that was negotiated by our representative before they signed the agreement.
So, the question of saying the redundancy was at our behest was in fact very outrageous and laughable. How can the union go to the managements and ask for redundancy? Yes, we have issues and challenges in the system, but apart from Seven-Up where [Comrade Peter] Onoja comes from, there are some other companies that redundancies have not been carried out. Why don’t we go there and ask them to do redundancy there too since they (agitators) have members there? That is not true!
We have absolutely nothing to do with redundancy sponsorship, the secretariat has nothing to do with it, and Nigerian Breweries cannot say they carried out the exercise at the request of anybody from the union’s secretariat.
NR: In some of the companies where redundancy did not take place, we gathered that union officials were demoted on the directive of the National Secretariat such that some branch chairmen were said to have been demoted to deputy chairman or ex-officios.
Olanrewaju: May be, the chairman and secretary of Nigerian Breweries plant in Ota, who opted to go, may be, what they did now that their positions are now vacant and they now had to co-opt people in accordance with the constitution of the union, where it is clearly stated that if a position is vacant it can be filled by people the majority of the exco go for.
I have not heard of where some officers were demoted, no, I have not heard that. If you know exactly the company where such has happened, may be you can let us know.
NR: That was one of the curious allegations that we heard and that’s why we’re asking for your response, and now you have refuted it. But we would like to know, where there some units or branches whose leadership had been tampered with in the course of this crisis?
Olanrewaju: Like I said, if you know a specific company, unit or branch where this has happened, let us know so that we can look at them and find out what transpired there. You know, our constitution is so dynamic. Our state branches have the right, they have the power to investigate any acts of misconduct against recalcitrant members; they have the right to even suspend and fill unit and branch leaders and later forward such resolutions to the national secretariat.
So, it is not that national secretariat has to be involved in everything. In any case, if there is such a thing, if it is reported, we will look at it and reappraise it, so that is how we operate, our union, we are always transparent, we don’t witch-hunt anybody.
NR: Okay Comrade; what about the issue of casual workers, the allegation that your union collects check-off dues from them but don’t provide any services especially when they are maltreated.
Well, I will say yes and no, to some extent. Yes in the sense that we have discovered that outsourcing has become too prevalent in our system and unfortunately our [labour] regulation does not give support to workers and unions unlike in other climes or in advance countries. So we have problem of casualisation here.
But what shall we do. In those days, like in Seven-Up for instance, it is a battle that we are fighting every day, and I will tell you now how far we are in that battle. Before, we were able to succeed in Seven-Up, Coca-Cola and Guinness that all their workers; whether they are on contract, whether they are casual, they are our members.
Why did we make sure of that? We are not comfortable that they are union members when we cannot have collective bargaining for them, but what we do is that every of them that are our members, unlike before they are unionised, when the contractor or the management can just wake up and sack them, they can no longer do that to anyone anymore, unless that casual worker is not a union member. Before any contractor or management sacks casual workers, they must follow due process of at least giving query, and we even made sure now that some of them can go on leave. Before, they were treated just like slaves; that is what has been happening.
But we know the situation; it is not even the real companies that operate in the food and beverage sector that belong to the employers association. So those companies that don’t belong, they feel that they are not bound by some of these agreements. That is why we insisted that if it is from the Federal Ministry of Labour as a guideline for regulating the food, beverage and tobacco sector and most of them now know that they are going to be banned, and we have written our proposal with the details telling them, looking at the situation of our sector, how we want it to be; and circulate it to employers and FOBTOB because it is a tripartite thing, which we have done.
Then, we equally recognise, as I speak with you, most of the unions that came to Abuja sometimes is on that issue. We discovered that NUPENG and PENGASSAN submitted some time ago in 2012; a special regulation that was formulated by the Federal Ministry of Labour for them that moderates contract staff there in the oil and gas sector. When we saw this, we said well, we are all operating under the same Trade Union Act, and we know that anything that affects workers anywhere should be the same thing that should apply to others elsewhere.
We have decided to borrow this to our union. In some areas, we succeeded in referring to that to be able to unionise these people, but in some others we could not because it was not drafted for our sector. But now, we have discovered that the Ministry [of Labour and Employment]; as I am speaking with you, we have information that they are in the process of drafting guidelines for contract staff and others for medical sector, electricity sector, banking sector; about five different sectors, that are been looked at.
So, when we look at this, we, our union, now wrote on our own volition to the Ministry, because we discovered that we have the right if the Ministry is not moved. The irony is that all these other ones were at the prompting of the Ministry as a proactive measure against industrial unrest, but we now wrote that the Ministry should get us such a thing as they did for PENGASSAN and NUPENG. We referred to PENGASSAN and NUPENG because that thing has been able to stabilise them.
The Ministry now invited us; our union, our senior counterpart – FOBTOB – then they now invited the petrol unions to Abuja. We were all represented by 6 people each and the Ministry looked at it, listened to us, even the employers actually wanted to condemn it that we should go and do it under our agency, that we should go there and negotiate.
But we know the situation; it is not even the real companies that operate in the food and beverage sector that belong to the employers association. So those companies that don’t belong, they feel that they are not bound by some of these agreements. That is why we insisted that if it is from the Federal Ministry of Labour as a guideline for regulating the food, beverage and tobacco sector and most of them now know that they are going to be banned, and we have written our proposal with the details telling them, looking at the situation of our sector, how we want it to be; and circulate it to employers and FOBTOB because it is a tripartite thing, which we have done.
They said we should give them time to study it. Last week Friday (24th September, 2021), we met to review it so that some grey areas are harmonised. We had put up a committee to do this and once we are through with it, we will now send it to the Ministry.
Why we want to do this is that it will become a work tool, it will become mandatory in the system that every contract worker will have collective bargaining. For now, when there is salary increase for regular workers, we cannot bargain for contract staff because their employers are not members of the employers association and we cannot go there to bargain.
But what we have been able to do was just to safeguard their jobs, give them job security and we have been able to achieve that. Like I told you; if not for anything, that was what we were able to achieve by ensuring that we unionise them everywhere, then sometimes we co-opt each of the contract company, the leadership among them, as ex-officios of our union at the unit or branch levels. We had to make sure there is job security for them.
We are not happy on the situation but we have been driving this thing for years but I think it is gradually coming to fruition. That is why I said it is yes and no. We know, and we are telling management; it is not a question of just unionising them. If you announce for instance, negotiating, like every three years, we will negotiate…for salary increase, which we have never failed to do, we have submitted our proposal because it will soon be due.
NR: All these details are important quite alright, but the question I asked was that the union is collecting check-off dues from casual workers but they are not benefitting from the activities of the union
No, they are benefitting, if you say they are not benefitting, that will be totally untrue. They are benefitting because wherever we have unionised, like Seven-Up, like Guinness, they are not more than five, among the whole companies. Nigerian Breweries has not allowed that, even WACCO, so many of them.
NR: Comrade, that is basically the issue. In the sector, casual workers are said to be more in number than regular workers, and since the union collects check-off on the casual workers, it seems not to be bothered by what happens to the regular workers since check-off dues are collected either way, it is head or tail you win.
Those companies we have unionised, we have come to make sure that there is relative job security for them. If they must leave the job, like Seven-Up, for instance, management woke up one day and said they are changing…
NR: But no matter what is currently in place, the ultimate point is that they are casual workers and as such there is a limit to their rights or job security, and there is no way that anybody would prefer being a casual worker to being a permanent one.
We are not happy with that too, that is what I am telling you. It is either we leave them like that or we can improve the situation gradually. Like in Seven-Up, they are even happy because now most of the things that our members are now getting, when we started with Seven-Up first and later Cadbury, what the staff are getting, even though they do not get up to regular staff, they are getting gradually improved pay. There is no law that binds them because there is no collective bargaining; that is what we want to introduce, that there must be collective bargaining for them.
NR: Comrade, I am not disputing the fact and specifics of what you are saying, but what I am stressing is that, for instance, in Nigerian Breweries, as soon as the redundancy exercise was carried out, the management immediately followed it by employing casual workers and incidentally, some of those people who were sacked were re-employed as casual workers. We learnt this also happened in Seven-Up. We learnt that in the food industry, there are more casual workers than permanent ones.
You need to be with us always to know the fight we are fighting with the managements, against our employers. Casual workers are supposed to be for non-core jobs but they are not doing it like that; they are exploiting Nigerians!
We have written; go to the factories and see, when people are working, two to four are regular staff, the others are casuals, and they are treated as if they are not human beings. These are the things; we recognise that, but I still want to say that if you are not our union member, if they just tell them not to come to work, we cannot talk, that is why we started from that, to say okay, while we unionise them, they will be having access, they cannot just be staying at home.
When their contractor was stopped, we made it known to management that you have no right to change the employer of any worker without knowledge of that worker and labour; it is clearly stated under Trade Union Act, section 20. So it is clear there.
What the employers are doing is barbaric, it is not acceptable, that is what we are saying, but in our own little way to just manage that situation, we could have said, okay, we are not going to manage them, but most of them, their suffering could have been worse and there is no law that permits us, but now we are taking the bull by the horns and we are at advanced stage now. By the time we finish this regulation and we have a regulated guideline that regulates casual workers; some of the provisions there, if there must be any vacancy, it must be from the regular staff they must co-opt. Then, before a position can be contracted out to third party, it must not be a core job. If it is a job that somebody must do, it cannot be for a third party.
So those things we are fighting them, we are fighting, we will let you know about this when we are through. You don’t know what we are going through. On the issue of expatriate, we are fighting it like our life is at stake.
