Hundreds of protesting workers on Friday morning locked
up and shut down activities at the Enterprise Bank headquarters in Lagos. The
placard-carrying workers who were chanting and singing solidarity songs were
requesting that the bank's management pay them off and settle their outstanding
benefits.
The president of the workers' union Comrade Murphy
Adeyemi Adesanya, said the protest is against the “illegal transfer of service
by the bank's management".
Following CBN’s directive that all banks should divest
their subsidiaries, Enterprise Bank which owns First Spring Franchise Services,
is transferring the services of the workers to new entities; Resource
Intermediary, XL Logistics and Micheal Stephens.
The protesting workers according to Adesanya constitute
about 80% of the bank's work force.
"We met with the management and request that
all labour related issues should be solved" the president said.
Enumerating the worker's grievances, Adesanya said
"tax clearance from 2006 was deducted but not remitted , pension from
2006, some remitted some were not, our national housing fund was deducted but
no remittance at all. They sack some of our members illegally without paying
them, without following labour law. We ask them to call them back or pay them
off". He lamented that " all these issues were ignored".
"We are more than 2000 workers, about 80% of
the workforce. They are throwing us to the next entities without settling the
benefits and paying us off. We have put in 6 years of service. They are not
ready to pay."
The workers who were all on contract employment with
the bank until 25th September said "we had an agreement with them on 14th
of May that they will pay us 3 months’ gross salary multiply by the
number of years you have put in. They implemented it for 14 of our members who
were sick, we ask them to use the same method to pay us off. They are silent
they don’t want to pay at all."
Expressing his surprise at the attitude of the
management, Adesanya said the union was dialouging with them as at yesterday
night. "Workers now agreed that management should come and address them
but this morning we met the door locked. We learnt some staff are coming to
take over our jobs".
The lock-down has halt activities at the bank's headquarters
and branches nationwide as network services and power supply have been shut
down by the workers.
All efforts to contact the bank's management proved
abortive as Daily Times could not gain entrance into the headquarters which was
guarded by armed policemen.