The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed for second reading, a bill seeking to criminalise maintenance of casual workers also known as ‘contract staff’ beyond six months by any employer.

The House will also prohibit outsourcing of jobs to third parties by employers.

Workers sacked by an employer after six months on casual status, without being converted to full-time employees, shall be entitled to the benefits of full-time workers for six months after disengagement.

This is contained in the Labour Act (Amendment) Bill 2019, which the House considered on during the plenary.

The short title of the legislation reads, ‘A Bill for an Act to Prohibit and Criminalise Casualisation of Workers After Six Months of Engagement by Employers in Nigeria, Outsourcing Employment in Core Areas of Operation and Other Related Matters.’

Leading the debate on the bill, the sponsor, Mr Olawale Raji, said, “The rate of unemployment in Nigeria is currently estimated at 33.5 per cent. This estimate does not include workers in disguised unemployment constituted largely by workers in casual/contract employment.

“Currently, Section 7 of the Labour Act provides that not later than three months after the beginning of a worker’s employment, the employer shall give him a written statement of employment containing the terms and conditions of employment. However, under the extant law, there is no adequate consequence for noncompliance.

“The proposed amendment is intended to abolish the obnoxious practice of casualisation of a worker’s employment by creating a new Section 8, which provides that an employer has a period of not less than six months of engaging a worker to regularize his appointment as a full and permanent staff.

“It also provides that in the event of disengagement of a worker after a period of six months from the date of first engagement without regularisation, the worker shall be entitled to full salary, allowance and other benefits due to a permanent staff upon disengagement, provided that the worker has not been found liable of a criminal act involving fraud resulting to financial loss to the company.”

Raji added, “Outsourcing of jobs in an employer’s core area(s) of business. The concept of outsourcing of employment within the core areas of business of an employer was not anticipated during the enactment of the extant law and the employers of labour in Nigeria has exploited this lacuna in outsourcing of jobs within their core areas of the business to the disadvantage of the Nigerian workers. These employers of labour have taken undue advantage of the unemployment situation in the country to slave labour. Employers in the banking, telecoms and the oil and gas industries are the worst culprits.

“To cure these anomalies, we have proposed a new Section 9 which is to the effect that notwithstanding the provisions of Section 25 of the extant Labour Act, employment outsourcing within an employer’s core area of business is prohibited and it will be an offence for a person or company to pay another for services rendered by its workers.”

The proposed law states that failure by an employer to comply with Subsections 1 and 2 would constitute an offence, which would attract a two-year sentence, N2m fine or both.

The House had on December 4, 2019, called on the Central Bank of Nigeria to sanction commercial banks who use casual staff to run their critical operations. It had also asked the deposit money banks to convert their causal workers to full-time staff.

After adopting a motion on the matter, the lawmakers called on commercial banks “to convert their casual staff who are handling core operations to permanent staff without further delay,” while urging the CBN “to sanction any bank that fails to comply.”

The House had also mandated the Committees on Banking and Currency; and Labour, Employment and Productivity to interface with banks “on the need to stop casualisation of their core operational staff.”