NATIONAL Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE) has this morning shut down Bristow Helicopters nationwide over plans to disengage its Nigerian pilots and engineers without any compliance to laws governing the expatriate quota and the local content act.
According to NAAPE, the shutdown on the helicopter company is as a result of the Bristow management declaring 13 Nigerian engineers and 10 Nigerian pilots redundant further hinting that the company’s expatriate quota is grossly in contravention of the country’s laws.
The pilot and engineer body has succeeded in shutting down Bristow’s operations nationwide with particular interest in the Port Harcourt, Lagos, Pan-African, Bats operations as it stated that while negotiation were ongoing the airline management was backdating the redundancy of affected staff.
According to the union, all this is happening because they were in the forefront of the battle to establish pay parity between Nigerian workers and their expatriate counterparts who hitherto were earning far more.
As at the time of filing this report, it was learnt that the Area commander of the Nigeria Police has called for a meeting between the airline management and the union to see how the industrial unrest can be quelled.
Nigerianflightdeck.com learnt from a reliable source that,” The management of Bristow Group has concluded plans to disengage Nigerian pilots and engineers in its employ without complying with the expatriate quota law and the Nigerian oil and gas industry content development act.”
“Bristow’s declaration of 13 Nigerian engineers and 10 Nigerian pilots redundant is totally unjustifiable because the current Nigerian expatriate ratio is grossly in contravention of Nigerian laws governing expatriate quota and local content.”
“The redundancy exercise in contention is management’s angry reaction to our union’s recent successful struggle to establish pay parity between expatriate quota and local content. Targeted at victimizing the branch officers for their roles in the union activities that brought about pay parity.”
‘All efforts by NAAPE to dissuade the management of Bristow group from carrying out the above stated unlawful act has not yielded the desired result. Instead, the management is bent on effecting the redundancy on 30th September, 2016, even when negotiation on redundancy benefits is yet to be concluded.”
Recall that NAAPE had directed all pilots and engineers in Bristow Group Nigeria to withdraw all services with effect from 2400hrs of Wednesday, March 30 to 2400hrs on Friday April 1, 2016 as a warning to Bristow Management over the pay parity issue.
