Louis Ibah
Kenya Airways is blaming the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) for the sack of 24 of its Nigerian workers saying the labour union had failed to take pro-active steps to protect the local staff when it notified of its intention to render the workers redundant.
A document made available to Daily Sun by a source within Kenya Airways listed several attempts made by the airline to facilitate a meeting with the unions on the planned redundancy of some of the Nigerian workers insisting that the union had failed to honour scheduled meetings to deliberate on the fate of the workers.
“We were very sad that the Nigerian union had clearly avoided the meetings scheduled with Kenya Airways on the redundancy plans, they kept procrastinating even when some of Kenya Airways officials came from our head office in Nairobi, Kenya. And it was as if they weren’t interested in what goes on with the workers,” said the source.
The letter with reference number: IR/NUATE/11/04/2018/BF dated April 11, 2018, sent to the General Secretary of the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) and signed by the Acting Chief Human Resources Officer of Kenya Airways, Bridgette Imbuga, and made available to Daily Sun, stated that the airline as at January 15, 2018 notified the union of its redundancy plan.
According to the letter, NUATE had picked different dates ranging from February 15, 2018, February 26, 2018, March 6, 2018, March 16, 2018, and April 5, 2018 for a meeting with the management of the airline, but failed to honour any of the dates and gave no excuses for its inability to honour any of the dates proposed by the union itself.
“From the foregoing, it is clear that you are unwilling or uninterested in engaging management in negotiations on such an important matter affecting employees who are your members. On our part, we have demonstrated our willingness and commitment to use our best endeavours to negotiate separation terms for the employees who will be affected by the redundancy,” the letter read.