May 17 (GIN)-In a protest over low wages and long hours, casual workers of the Nigerian Bottling Company, bottlers of Coca-Cola, said they would no longer accept their current daily wage of $2.56 (400 naira).
“We do hard labor with sweat as if we are prisoners, and they expect us to survive on $2.56 a day,” said Femi Martins, a worker. “We come to work every day, 31 days a month and 12 months a year, with nothing to show for it…At the end of the year, we don’t even get a bottle of Coke as a bonus for the year’s work.”
Bearing signs that read, “We say no to slavery,” the workers at the Ikeja plant in Lagos are seeking a monthly wage of $288 (45,000 naira), which is 200 percent more than their current pay of $107.89 (16,800 naira).
As casual staff, they do not get safety gear and are also paid less than permanent staff.
Management, in a statement seen by the newspaper NEXT, claimed it was handling the matter internally, but that the workers were actually hired “through service providers for the plant.”
Coke has operated in Nigeria for close to 20 years, employing close to 6,000 workers. In February this year, the company appointed Kelvin Balogun, a Nigerian, as its CEO.