The Joint Labour Movement’s leadership in Osun State rejected the staff audit that the state administration had suggested and demanded that they be properly briefed about the exercise.
A consulting company contracted by the state government to count the number of employees on its payroll distributed forms to workers, which led to the position of the labor leaders.
The leadership of the Joint Labour Movement, which includes the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress in the state, rose from a meeting and declared that it was rejecting the audit because of the difficulties that workers and pensioners had previously faced as a result of such an audit.
In a letter to the Head of Service, the labour leaders said, “At the end of the emergency meeting of the above Labour centres comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress, the Trade Union Congress, and the Joint Negotiating Council, which deliberated extensively on a purported 2023 Staff Audit Forms in circulation among the workers of Osun State, resolved as follows:
“That the Joint Labour Movement in the state rejects in its entirety, the circulation of the purported illegal forms by Sally Tibbot Consulting.
“That, considering the past experiences of Osun workers in exercises of this nature, the entire Joint Labour Movement in the state totally rejects any form of contractual agreement or consultancy service(s) that will further bring untold hardship on the workers and pensioners of Osun State.”
The state TUC chairman, Adebowale Adekola, provided additional insight into the matter during a Thursday interview. He added that while the government had the right to conduct an inventory, the labor leaders would also defend their followers’ rights.
He said, “We are stakeholders in government but we were not briefed about this staff audit. Circulating forms within an organisation without properly informing the leadership of such institution is unfair.
“No sane human being will tolerate such a move.
The government has the power and capacity to do staff audit or take an inventory, but we also have the mandate to protect the rights of workers. We should be properly briefed first.”
