In this piece, Henry Falaiye examines the legal framework surrounding casual workers in Nigeria, analysing the gaps and challenges confronting this substantial segment of the workforce.
Nigeria’s casual workers face significant struggles due to the numerous legal loopholes that leave them vulnerable and unprotected. Despite constituting a substantial portion of the workforce, they are often excluded from the rights and benefits enjoyed by permanent employees, such as job security, fair wages, health benefits, and safe working conditions. As the casualisation trend grows, so does the call for labour reforms.
Labour unions and civil society organisations are pushing for the government to address the legal gaps that allow employers to sidestep their responsibilities. Advocates argue for revisions to the Nigerian Labour Act to ensure that all workers, regardless of their employment status, are afforded basic rights such as fair wages, job security, and access to social protection.
Efforts are also being made to raise awareness among casual workers about their rights, empowering them to organise and demand better conditions.
However, without significant legislative changes, the plight of casual workers is likely to persist, leaving them trapped in a cycle of poverty and instability, with limited pathways to upward mobility.This shift, driven by companies aiming to reduce operational costs and maintain flexibility, often leaves workers in vulnerable positions, lacking the job security and benefits that come with permanent employment.
Recent data illustrates the magnitude of this issue. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, over 30 per cent of Nigeria’s workforce was employed in casual or informal roles as of 2023. This sizable portion of the labour force is excluded from many of the protections offered by formal employment contracts.
Additionally, the International Labour Organisation reports that around 60 per cent of casual workers in Nigeria earn less than the recently reviewed national minimum wage of N30,000 (approximately $18) per month, highlighting the significant wage disparity in this sector.
Furthermore, a survey conducted by the Nigeria Labour Congress revealed that nearly 70 per cent of casual workers lack access to essential benefits such as health insurance, paid leave, and pension plans. This absence of benefits not only exacerbates their vulnerability but also underscores the inadequacy of the current legal framework in addressing their needs.
Experts have decried that the casualisation of workers has emerged as a significant social issue and a detrimental factor in labour relations across various industries in developing countries, especially in Nigeria.This phenomenon stems from the intentional policies of multinational companies in both the production and service sectors, where they replace permanent employment with casual labour.
Casualisation became a feature of the Nigerian labour market in the late 1980s when the country adopted the Structural Adjustment Programme. The programme was geared toward less government involvement in the economy and more private sector participation to revitalise the private sector to attract much-needed foreign direct investment into the country.
However, this has led to unemployment and lowering of labour standards, thus, the growing recourse to the casualisation of labour in almost all the major industries in Nigeria.The Nigerian Labour Act does not provide for casual workers, nor does it provide a legal framework for the regulation of the terms and conditions of casual workers.
However, Section 7(1) of the Labour Act provides that a worker should not be employed for more than three months without the formal recognition of such employment. After three months, every worker must be given an employment letter stating the terms and conditions of employment by the employer.
The ambiguity and outdated nature of Nigerian labour laws regarding the classification of workers contribute to the widespread use of casualisation by employers. The Labour Act only defines one category of worker, referred to simply as a “worker”.
Some companies have developed sharp means of undermining all legal provisions by employing casual workers for three months and then dismissing them and then requiring them to submit new applications before re-employing them.
The Labour Act defines a “worker” to mean any person who has entered into or worked under a contract with an employer, whether the contract is for manual labour or clerical work or is expressed or implied, or oral or written, and whether it is a contract of service or a contract personally to execute any work or labour.
Meanwhile, Section 73 of the Employees Compensation Act defines an employee as a person employed by an employer under an oral or written contract of employment, whether continuous, part-time, temporary, apprenticeship, or casual, and includes a domestic servant who is not a member of the family of the employer.The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Joe Ajaero, had earlier condemned the prevalence of unfair employment practices across workplaces nationwide.
Ajaero pointed to the Ministry of Labour and Employment as being partly responsible for the growing trend of casualisation, outsourcing, and other exploitative labour practices.
According to a report by the Campaign for Democratic Workers’ Rights, more than 45 per cent of the impact of casualisation is felt in key sectors like the downstream oil and gas industry, telecommunications, banking, construction, and mining, among others. This widespread practice continues to undermine job security and workers’ rights in these industries.
The lack of a formal legal framework has allowed the practice of casualisation in labour management to persist, affecting employer-employee relationships.
This persistence is further reinforced by demographic changes in the labour force and has contributed to the perseverance and strength of casualisation in the workplace.
Speaking with newsmen, the General Secretary of the Informal Workers’ Organisations of Nigeria, Gbenga Komolafe, said, “Casualisation is a violation of labour rights. The Nigerian Labour Act is quite explicit about who a worker is and who a casual worker is. It states that after 90 days, workers should have his or her appointment regularised by the employer.
“But what we have had over the years has been a systematic and deliberate violation of that law. There have been situations where companies renew contracts every three months and then pretend to lay off workers and take them back again for another three months.
“They started that process that way until they had a way of legitimising the illegality. That is unfortunately what has happened over the years. It has resulted in deliberate and conscious degradation and it is more worrying that the Nigerian states have joined the bandwagon of this illegality because a lot of ministries now at national and state levels are now employing workers on a casual basis.”
According to him, a survey recently conducted in the oil and gas sector indicated that over 93 per cent of workers in the sector are casualised.
Komolafe highlighted that, according to interviews, some workers employed by multinational companies for decades continue to hold casual positions and earn as little as N23,000, based on the survey’s findings.
Furthermore, Komolafe mentioned that highly trained and specialised workers often face contract terminations nearly every December, exacerbating job insecurity and instability.
He stated, “As the year comes to a close, workers often experience heightened stress and anxiety, knowing that their contracts are likely to be terminated. Many labour contracting firms, which handle salary payments on behalf of companies, withhold significant portions of workers’ earnings, paying them only a fraction of their due salaries.”
He emphasised that the illegal practice of casualising workers has fuelled tribal and ethnic tensions within communities, as local groups demand that oil companies use their labour recruitment firms.
“As a result, workers carry the identification cards of these firms while working for multinational companies for years, without any employment records with the companies they actually serve,” he added.
The Assistant Secretary General of the NLC, Chris Onyeka, noted, “There are a whole lot of loopholes in the law that allow precarity to continue in various forms in Nigeria.
“It was one of these reasons that propelled the Nigeria Labour Advisory Council, which is a tripartite body made up of the government, unions and employers, to look for ways to examine labour administration laws to ensure that we protect workers in their various workplaces.
“And that was what led to the review of the laws. Those laws have been reviewed through the tripartite process, but as we speak, the government seems to have captured it somewhere and abandoned it in one of its MDAs.”Onyeka explained that the proposal was intended to be brought before the National Assembly for passage into law.
However, the government has since withheld action, leaving the proposed laws stagnant. This inaction has created a significant loophole.
For instance, he mentioned that there is a law that allows employers to hire individuals without issuing a formal employment letter for up to three months, saying employers exploit this by hiring workers as casual staff for 90 days, then terminating their employment just before the 90 days end.
“They rehire these workers as casual staff for another 90 days, and this cycle can continue for years. Consequently, these workers face issues such as a lack of promotion, benefits, and persistent abuse, while earning the same salary due to this regulatory gap,” Onyeka added.
He further stated that precarious work is perpetuated not only by legal loopholes but also by the complacency of those responsible for enforcing regulations. Casual work, he stressed, is fundamentally an abuse of the worker and a violation of basic human rights.
“A human being at work is not a commodity; casual work makes him or her a commodity that can be bought for some price and discarded at will without any consideration,” Onyeka said.
He pointed out that the Ministry of Labour, which is responsible for overseeing and regulating the sector, is not performing its duties effectively.
According to Onyeka, every morning, there are long queues of young men and women in their hundreds, waiting at different companies’ gates for daily work. Some of these individuals are underage and are hired under conditions that fail to meet our minimum standards.
“Because there is an increasing pool of the unemployed, it becomes easier for these employers to abuse the processes of recruitment and industrial relations. Sometimes, no break time, hazard allowances, amongst others,” he noted.
He mentioned that workers were suffering, and women who were casual employees were particularly vulnerable to exploitation, whether willingly or unwillingly.This, he lamented, often occurs when their job security depends on senior management officials’ wings.
Onyeka argued that the labour laws in Nigeria, which were reviewed through the tripartite process about five years ago, have not been forwarded to the National Assembly for passage.
“This delay is contributing to ongoing issues and fostering job precarity in the country,” he submitted.
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