Scores of aggrieved disengaged contract staff of Whyte Cleon Limited, an Insourcing subsidiary of First Bank Limited, stormed the Correspondents Chapel office of the Nigerian Union of journalist, Mokola, Ibadan to protest what they described their sudden and unruly disengagement.
The disengaged workers which were drawn from all the branches of the first generation bank in Oyo state also displayed placards to express their grievances and betrayal from an organisation whom they claimed to have laboured for with all their lives.
The group said they were engaging in the protest on behalf of the over 1,000 of their colleagues that have suffered a similar fate.
Addressing a press conference earlier at the Correspondents Chapel, the group said many of the disengaged workers had served the organization for not less than nine years but that instead of rewarding them with full employment status, the organization could only disengage them with a short message service (SMS) without any benefit, which they also said it is unacceptable.
In an address, the spokesperson of the group, Mr. Aleem Waheed, insisted that they were not engaged by WhyteCleon Limited, but by Insourcing Limited, a subsidiary and Human Resourcing arm of FirstBank and that they worked and were being paid by First Bank Limited.
The inscriptions on some of the placards read: “No To Modern Slavery By FirstBank. Pay Us Our 9 Years Benefit”, “@First Bank Nig, If U Must Sack Pay Entitlement”, “FirstBank Engages In Modern Slavery. Pay Your Support Staffs Their Entitlements After 9 Years”,
Still, others read: ““Our Mumu Don Do. Firstbank, Pay My 9 Years Entitlement”, “FBN = In-Sourcing = Whytcleon. Stop Slavery”, “FirstBank Exploiting Staff Since 1894”, “#Firstbank. The Right Way To Lay Off Is To #Payoff”, “9 Years Of Corporate Slavery. First Bank Give Us Our Entitlement” and “First Bank, Pay Our 9 Years Benefits”, amongst others.
He stressed that the disengaged staff with varying years of service ranging from between seven to nine years served the bank with all diligence as none of them was sacked based on incompetence or misconduct. He added that “all through our years of service in the bank, many anomalies had been ongoing. For instance, they don’t pay us some bonuses and allowances which were being enjoyed by full fledged staff of the organization despite the fact that some of us dubbed contract staff have better qualification and years of experience than some of the full fledge staffs.”
Furthermore, Waheed who was flanked by some other aggrieved staffs noted that many of them had served the company without complaints, despite being in the know of many anomalies, and that they were being denied some entitlements and benefits that they all worked.
He gave some of them to include, “Pay For Performance (PFP), Up Front, Relocation Allowance, Millage Claim (travel allowance for training) amongst others.”
According to the gloom looking disengaged staff, the knowledge that the employer had no career plan for the staff was obvious when their employer started disengaging them with SMS without compensation or anything to fall back, which was against the rule of engagement of any corporate and reputable organization.
No formal letter of disengagement was issued to the workers, as at the time they were told to hand over all bank belongings in their custody and stop reporting for work.
The copy of the text which was made available to reporters read, “Dear Colleague this is to inform you that you are here recalled to Whyte Cleon Limited effective September 8, 2017. Kindly submit all Banks properties in your custody, including handover note, ID card, Token and other documents to your BM/HBS/Supervisor effective Monday 11th September 2017, you are no longer expected to report to your current location. For further directives or call the number of the officer overseeing your region as indicated below: North Jumai Adams (08091052850), South-South Olalekan Atoyebi (08187078518), West Onoriode Aramogbo (08023417968). Thank you”.
According to the spokesperson, most SMS delivered when many of the workers had already reported for duty but unable to log on unto the system.
The group appeals to the government, the Central Bank of Nigeria and relevant stakeholders to quickly come to their aid by impressing on the bank to pay them for the nine years of service that they had laboured for the all the success the organization has achieved, particularly in the last nine years they served the bank.
Fielding questions from reporters, the group noted that the so-called casual workers were the backbone and strength of any FBN branch in the country as their number in all the branches always outnumber the core staff, yet they were the least paid and least appreciated.
He added that, the salaries they were being paid was too meagre for anyone of them to have something to fall back on, but that, their hope of being converted to full staff someday soon, as promised by the employer accounted for the reason many of them had endured the agony and pain of remaining in the bank for that long.
Some of the branches that some of the protesters last worked include, Ikire, Saki, Ogbomosho, UI, Iseyin, Okeho, Mokola, Yemetu, Apata, Ring-Road, Town Planning, Molete and New Bodija.
Others are Orita branch, Ibadan Main Branch (Dugbe), Oke Ado branch and Lebanon branch among others.
While calling on the members of the public, particularly customers of the first generation bank to step into the matter by calling the bank to order, the group warned that, the fear of the disengagement which usually happens every Friday can push those yet to be disengaged to perpetrate fraud which might be to the detriment of the customers.
