Trending 
Workers of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCo) held a protest on Tuesday morning, locking the gate to the company’s Broad Street office in Lagos.
The protest was coordinated by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) to complain about the discriminatory payment of salaries, modern-day slavery, and unfair benchmarking under its global pay structure.
The protest caused serious traffic after Shell workers barricaded the gates and prevented others from coming into the building, including the vehicles of top officials of SNEPCo.
The workers were seen carrying placards with statements like “No to conscious bias in pay benchmarking in Nigeria”, “Stop Modern Day Slavery,” and “Stop Indiscriminate Payment.”
They complained about the company’s payment policy and called it “Best-in-Basin” with poor pay because it didn’t cater to local peculiarities. The workers accused SNEPCo of giving them allowances that are not market-reflective.
According to one of the workers who chose to remain anonymous, the company’s car grants were not realistic.
“Can you imagine a company giving a staff N1 million to buy a car now? yes, N1 million could look like a huge sum, but it can’t even get you a bicycle not to talk of a car.”
Another worker said that the working conditions in certain aspects of the company were deteriorating rapidly. Adding that many positions meant for Nigerians were given to expatriates.
They also said the stress, heavy workload, debt burden and repeated restructuring were causing “Non-Accidental Deaths” among colleagues. The workers said they staged the protest because the company failed to address their demands.
