The National Union of Air Transport Employees(NUATE) has said that the real reason for the sack of the seven out of eleven employees under trump up charges by Turkish Airlines is the continued determination by the carrier to exterminate the union from the airline contrary to the airline’s claim that they were involved in ticket racketeering which has caused the airline to lose $600,000.
NAUTE made the clarification in a statement signed by its General Secretary , Ocheme Aba and made available to aviation journalists in Lagos.
According to NUATE the attempt to stop unionism at the airline started in 2020 when it sacked all the members of the airline’s Branch Executive Council of the union, a matter that it has refused to rectify till date.
The union said that the claim that the seven workers were involved in ticket racketeering and that NUATE was picketing the airline in the wrongful defence of the workers’ wrongdoings were false and far from the truth.
The union stated that the claim that the airline lost $600,000 is mere phantom, adding that what happened was that sometime in April, 2023, Turkish Airlines’ headquarters issued a sales restriction circular which allowed sales of only two premium classes of tickets as a response to foreign airlines’ difficulty in repatriating their proceeds to home countries due to foreign exchange constraints in Nigeria.
The union stated that but in a contradicting manner the airline had an advertised fare on the website which was much lower than the permitted fares.
It explained that intending passengers who accessed such fare, but could not pay online were directed by the global call center to approach the Nigerian offices.
The union added that as the workers could not attend to the customers due to the sales restriction, the passengers resorted to creating ugly scenes at the sales offices which became riotous at times.
NUATE posited that as an image saving measure, the then sales manager asked the sales staff to use the PNR obtained online by the customers to process the tickets if the airline’s booking system could route the tickets and that the sales staff simply complied.
NUATE further explained that as a matter of fact, the then Sales Manager, a Turkish national, sold the tickets too to confirm that this was the local management’s approved approach to resolving the problem created by the website.
“The Airline’s accountants received all due monies from all tickets sold and all sales reports were daily submitted to the Sales Manager, signed by him and the accounts department and scanned to HQ. If monies were not fully received, the account would not have balanced, and sales could not have been concluded. Therefore, no money belonging to Turkish Airlines is missing. And no staff has taken any money belonging to Turkish Airlines. Importantly, no staff had any pecuniary benefit from the so-called internet sales,” NUATE clarified.
NUATE asserted that it is, disingenuous for the General Manager to hold the workers to the charge of failure to comply with the sales restrictions when it is clear that shortcomings on the part of the airlines ICT (on the website) combined with Local Management’s decisions on managing an otherwise ugly situation were responsible for the sales in question.
The union contended that while the Nigerian staff have been dismissed, the Turkish Sales Manager, Mr Lokman Balkan, has been promoted and redeployed, and the ICT of the airline has answered no charges.
This action NUATE said is a very good example of racism.
On the claim by the airline it held several meetings with NUATE and that the union fully participated in the disciplinary committee that tried the workers, the union said that the airline is engaged in telling only half truth.
Clarifying the issue, NUATE said that in none of the meetings did the union agree with the management’s positions or its findings.
It further explained that at the so called disciplinary hearing, the union made it absolutely clear that the committee could only be used as a fact finding means as it was not formed in conformity with the negotiated Conditions of Service, adding that this was because the so called Disciplinary Committee that sat over the matter was nothing but a kangaroo court.
The General Manager who issued queries to the staff and decided that their responses were not accepted, the union said, was the same person who constituted the Committee, and was the same person who chaired the Committee.
The union contended that under the circumstance, it was practically impossible to have fair hearing, nor justice as can be seen from the outcome, adding that at any rate, the union conveyed its position to the management in writing at the time.
On the allegation by Turkish Airlines that NUATE is disrupting the airline’s operations despite a restraining order of court, NUATE said that it was the Nigeria Labour Congress(NLC) that called for the picketing and not NUATE as claimed by the carrier .
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