Workers demonstrate against oil service firm

More than 50 workers of Schlum Berger, an oil service firm in the Western Region, on Monday demonstrated against the management for poor working conditions.

The workers wore red arm bands and chanted war songs in front of the company’s premises at Apremdo near Takoradi.


They complained bitterly against the oil firm for not increasing their salaries for the past two years because they had proposed to join a labour union.


When the GNA contacted Mr. Fuseini Iddrisu, General Secretary of the General Transport and Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union (GTPCWU) of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), he said the workers petitioned the Union and expressed their interest to join the union about two years ago.


Therefore, he said, the union also wrote a letter to the management of Schlum Berger in January 2012 to cooperate in order to facilitate the process of unionizing the workers.

He said when the workers are unionized it would help them to get a bargaining certificate to negotiate with management for better working conditions and Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).


However, Mr. Iddrisu said, since 2012, the management of the oil firm was not cooperating to ensure smooth unionization of the workers therefore the issue of CBA as well as salary and wage negotiation still lingers on, hence the demonstration by the workers.


He said the union would petition the National Labour Commission (NLC) and urged the aggrieved workers to exercise patience.


Mr Iddrisu said some multi-national oil service companies operating in the country were not treating the local workers fairly and urged the NLC to crack the whip on defaulting oil firms since the local content law on petroleum had been passed to ensure fairness in the sector.