Workers’ unions in the aviation industry, on Monday, staged a peaceful protest at the Lagos airport.
They called for the removal of some clauses in the Civil Aviation Act recently passed by the National Assembly.
The protest led to disruption of vehicular movement into the local and international airports and exacerbated by the early morning rainfall in Lagos.
Also, aviation agencies’ offices were under lock and key to prevent any worker from accessing the facilities.
Executives of the unions and their members defied the rain, chanted solidarity songs, and carried placards with different inscriptions such as: “Our strength is in our union, Aviation ministry should not regulate labour.
“Our right to protest is covered under ILO Convention”; “Banning workers from unionism is evil,” among others.
Addressing members of the unions in the various aviation agencies, Secretary General of the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), Ocheme Aba, said the clauses, which forbade them from embarking on strike, should be expunged before the Act is signed into law by the President.
Aba emphasised that if the unions’ demands were not acceded to, they would embark on a full-blown nationwide strike in the next 14 days.
According to him, the Act is a ploy to deny workers in the aviation industry their fundamental human right of freedom of association and the right to speak up, if certain issues are against their interest.