How ATSSSAN picketing halts Aviation activities in MMA2 terminal

By Chukwuemeke Iwelunmo

Activities at the MMA2 were paralyzed in the early hours of Tuesday, following the picketing of the terminal by members of the Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN) over the sack of its members

It was learnt that the unionists arrived at the terminal building around 5 am and barricaded both the entry and exit gates thereby stopping passengers who had early morning flights to catch from accessing the terminal.

Our correspondent who arrived at the terminal around 7.30 am reported that there were the unionists did not harass anyone but they ensured that access to the facility was denied, DailyTimesNGR gathered.

It was also observed that the unionists were dancing frenetically to loud music coming from jukeboxes mounted at strategic places where the picketing took place.

ATSSSAN had, at a media briefing in Lagos Monday condemned the action of BASL for axing its members without following any due process.

Although it did not mention picketing as the last resort, the deputy general secretary of the association, Mr Frances Akinjole, had said in a statement entitled ‘Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited: A case of unrepentant slave masters’ that the union would not be held responsible for the “consequential effects” of the action taken by the terminal manager.

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He alleged that ATSSSAN staff were objects of witch-hunt and intimidation before their ignominious sack by the BASL management.

The statement reads: “We may all recall that a situation occurred sometime in the year 2018 when some set of workers in Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL) were sacked for expressing their constitutional right of becoming members of a trade union.

“That sack was, of course, regrettably met with the joint aviation unions shutting down the Murtala Muhammed Airport 2 terminal for two consecutive days. The whole twenty-nine (29) members of our union that was then affected were unfortunately sacrificed through an uncommon ugly redundancy arrangement. The fallout of the crisis was the grudging acceptance of unionism into the BASL by their management.

“Series of intimidation of union members continued in the company, while at the same time, union membership also continued to grow because staff yearned for protection.

“Our union concluded the signing of the staff conditions of service (CoS) for our members in Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited on the 16th of June, 2021 after a rather prolonged negotiation with management.

“Soon (in October 2021) after the execution of the CoS document, a female member of the union resigned her appointment with the BASL when she could no longer condone the intimidation, and presentation of a cheque for her terminal benefits, which she rejected became an issue.

“The issue was that BASL Management used historical (year by year) computation to calculate her exit pay instead of the expected last (terminal) salary. The rejected cheque denied the beneficiary to the tune of about N3, 000,000.00. Section 1.12 of the conditions of service provides two months’ basic salary per year served.

“A letter was immediately forwarded to the BASL Management, reporting the complaint and seeking a meeting to trash out the issue.

“Series of meetings with the attendance of the highest hierarchy of our union were held until when we discovered that BASL management was not sincerely cooperative with the discussions. It took the national president’s initiative to secure the intervention of an outsider mediator (who is known to be very close to the chairman of the company) to bring sanity to our discussions with BASL Management.

“During this interval, a number of some other termination/dismissals of members of our union occurred. Cases of termination without recourse to due processes on our members continued to be reported. Even subsequent resignation cases could not be resolved because of the lingering issue of exit payment computation formula.

“All these cases were compounded into what we continued to discuss with the Management together with the mediator.

“Non-quick resolution of the matters became an issue with our members in Bi-Courtney. Workers’ Congresses were held with resolutions passed, and BASL management remained adamantly uncooperative. At some points, the rank and file of the membership of the Bi-Courtney branch became very agitated and they came to occupy our national secretariat by locking the secretariat staff in the rain. Yet our union did not vent any anger of the company.

“The realisation of the possibility of the company taking to litigation as an option, and considering the fact that we have already overstayed on the issue, our union therefore, jettisoned our demand for the use of terminal salary for computation of exit pay for members and agreed to the use of management’s option of historical computation. We were thus advised by management in a meeting where this agreement was conveyed to them verbally, to put our acceptance in writing, and that they would get back to us.

“While we were still awaiting the response of management to paying members their dues on historical basis, Management decided to compile names of staffers who are predominantly union members and exco members for a forced ten days leave of absence. We were all surprised at this embarrassing development”