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10 July, 2006
Oil fields workers’ in southern Chad launched a three-day strike against Esso-Tchad, US-based ExxonMobil’s operating unit there, over wage discrimination and neglect over implementation of a career development plan by the oil and gas supermajor. Oil workers in Chad are also upset that the money produced through their labours is not reflected in their socioeconomic standing.
The strike by over 400 workers lasted from 4 to 6 July in the Doba oil fields of Kome, Miandoum, and Bolobo. Oil workers served notice that future strikes would occur, possibly production of the 200,000 barrel-a-day output sent through the three-year-old Chad-Cameroon pipeline, unless workers’ demands are met. The strike was caused by Esso-Tchad when it placed an inferior pay offer before the workers a day before the walkout began.
Management offered a pay increase of only 7.5%, while workers are seeking 25% in order to bring pay levels closer to oil workers on the transit side of the upstream development in Cameroon. Chad’s national labour centre, Union des Syndicats de Tchad (UST), is assisting oil workers in talks.
In March, the union representing the workers issued demands in the form of a statement that called out the unequal pay practices between oil workers in Chad and Cameroon, and charged that a phantom “career progression plan had never been seen by the Chadian personnel, who continue to receive a salary that is not equivalent to the services rendered or the socioeconomic situation.” Esso-Tchad made no response to those demands.
The Doba fields, connected to the Cameroon port of Kribi by a 1,063-kilometre pipeline, belong to a consortium of oil companies, with ExxonMobil holding 40%, Malaysia’s Petronas 35%, and US-based Chevron a 25% stake. The World Bank-funded development project became mired in controversy when, in January 2006, Chad’s government changed the bank’s financial arrangements, and diverted monies away from poverty relief and social programmes to counter civil strife, leading to a mass of refugees entering eastern Chad from the Sudan.
With a stalemate brought by the World Bank’s dispute with Chad’s government, ExxonMobil decided to stop royalty payments to the government of Chad, worth some US$20 million per month, which further choked resources in one of the world’s poorest countries.
The World Bank-sponsored Chad-Cameroon pipeline has been plagued by other labour and human rights problems as well. In September 2005, Chad’s national gendarmerie broke up peaceful protests by contract workers who had been denied overtime pay while employed by Chad-Cameroon Constructors, the oil companies’ consortium building the pipeline. The police action left three dead and three seriously injured.