The Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN), on Monday, stated that after 21 days, if the Shipping Association of Nigeria (SAN) fails to convene a meeting on improved benefits for maritime workers, the Association will be left with no choice than to declare a state of emergency in Nigeria’s shipping sector.
According to a statement signed, on Monday, by the Deputy General Secretary of MWUN, Abudu Eroje, the association described the SAN as keeping maritime workers in absolute poverty and penury through stagnated- wage structures in the last twenty years.
“In the eye of recent events affecting all our members in the Shipping sector in Nigeria, we are constrained to bring to public space the following Viz:
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“Having exhausted all legal and social means to get members of the Shippers Association of Nigeria (SAN) to a round table discussion with representatives of Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) at which means we had hoped that we find redress to the very inhumane, deplorable and slavish conditions our members are subjected to in their various workplace.
“Having consistently ignored our myriad calls: Shippers Association of Nigeria and its members have conducted themselves in a manner which perpetually keeps our members in the Shipping Industry in penury and pain: in most cases, they have been stagnated on one salary structure for over twenty years, worst wage structure, anti-union activities, burdensome tariff regimes etc. “They have formed themselves into lodges above and impervious to our National Laws breaching every rule of industrial relations thus, engendering a failure in our social partnership existed at all.
“We have reported Shippers’ Association of Nigeria to the Nigeria Labour Congress – Our National Labour Centre, who have directed that in the interest of industrial peace in the Shipping Industry in Nigeria, albeit, Maritime Sector, that the SAN convene a meeting in the next twenty-one (21) days with representatives of the Union.
“Please note that in the event of SAN’s non-compliance the union will be constrained to declare a state of emergency in the Shipping sector in Nigeria,” the maritime workers stated, on Monday, in Lagos.
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