Don't see much news on the Nigeria strike yet -
This from AP
Nigeria calls talks as second union joins oil strike
Tue Feb 18,11:50 AM ET
By DULUE MBACHU, Associated Press Writer
LAGOS, Nigeria - About 600 blue-collar oil workers joined more than 800 white-collar colleagues Tuesday in a strike threatening Nigeria's crude exports, and Nigeria called talks to try to end the walkout before it spreads industrywide.
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The 4-day-old strike comes as oil prices climb near two-year highs, pushed up by the threat of war against Iraq and a prolonged strike in Venezuela.
Nigeria is the world's sixth-largest exporter of crude. Half of the exports go to the United States.
The walkout so far is limited to union employees of the Department of Petroleum Resources, a key government unit overseeing loading at export terminals for multinationals including ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Royal Dutch/Shell and TotalFinaElf.
Union workers for other agencies and the multinationals themselves threaten to take the strike industrywide if the government fails to resolve their grievances over working conditions and pay.
The blue-collar National Union of Petroleum and Gas Workers Union of Nigeria joined the strike Tuesday. Office workers in the white-collar Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria had launched the walkout.
"Now we've joined, it will cripple operations at the oil terminals," said Joseph Akinlaja, secretary-general of the union of artisan and semiskilled workers.
Replacement workers sent to the country's oil terminals to oversee work abandoned by the strikers so far have been able to keep crude exports flowing, said Belema Osibodu, spokeswoman for the Department of Petroleum Resources.
Agency authorities scheduled a meeting Wednesday with the striking workers, Osibodu said.
Strikers are demanding more than a year's worth of back pay, including unpaid overtime; expenses; and travel allowances. They are also demanding greater autonomy and better financing for the department, which they say is crippled by inefficient bureaucracy.
President Olusegun Obasanjo's energy adviser, Rilwanu Lukman, offered to meet with the strikers Feb. 25, according to union officials. But strikers rejected the proposal, saying it did not reflect the urgency of their demands.
The government can ill afford a prolonged strike as it seeks to tackle widespread poverty and repair infrastructure left to decay during decades of corrupt military rule. Oil exports account for more than 80 percent of government revenue and more than 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings.
Nigeria produces over 2 million barrels of oil a day, more than 95 percent of which is pumped by joint ventures between the government and major oil companies. |
