#Corporate Slavery! Huawei gets knocks for “stupid” company policy
By Abraham Adegoke
Chinese IT giant, Huawei, has come under fire following the leak, on Twitter, of a memo barring her non-Chinese staff from eating during work hours.
@Chy_buzz tweeted a picture of the correspondence on Wednesday sparking angry reactions from other Twitter users.
Some tweeps, in reaction, questioned the existence of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) while others lamented the situation that allowed foreigners enslave Nigerians in their country.
Work conditions remain a lingering topic in Nigeria with the government and labour union failing to take decisive action about the many Nigerians who are made to work under hellish conditions especially by foreign countries.
The media have variously reported cases of Nigerians made to work long hours, 7 days a week while being paid meagre salaries. Worst still, work place benefits such as health insurance, retirement benefits are never in the equation.
“Nigerians work there from 7am to 7pm, Monday to Saturday and sometimes Sundays. We put in 72 hours of our life time weekly without overtime payment. Yet, if you are absent from work, for whatever reason, be it sickness, they would deduct money from your monthly salary,” a former Safety Officer of African Fertilizers and Chemicals Nigeria Limited, owned by Indians, told the Vanguard.
Mr. Jonathan Abimbola also pointed out the disparity between the treatment the companies give to foreign workers and that of Nigerians.
The Chinese and Indian owned companies have been the major culprits.
Here are the tweets:
This tweep narrates a similar story:
“We are aware of the information on twitter and there is an understandable misrepresentation,” Kevin Li, the Public Relations Manager of Huawei Nigeria told Newsroom.
In a statement made available to us, Dorothy Johnson, the company’s HR Director, said the misunderstanding occurred “because the full message issued by the company’s HR department on November 26th was edited by some Huawei departments to make the message shorter but, unfortunately, less clear.”
According to the statement, the company’s non-Chinese staff voted, in a survey, to start work by 8:00am and finish at 5:00pm with a one hour break for lunch while their Chinese counterparts voted to start by 8:30pm and finish by 6:00pm with a 90 minute break.
Emphasizing that all the company’s staff work the same number of hours, the HR director also said the company encourages members of staff to eat in its newly refurbished canteen during the break time.
“Any suggestion that Huawei does not offer its employees in Nigeria appropriate facilities or adequate time for eating during work hours is a misunderstanding,” the statement reads..
