Bolt Nigeria opens up on ‘dispute’ with e-hailing union

Bolt Nigeria has finally addressed the run-in it has with the Nigerian e-hailing union, describing it as a quest for clarification of the Nigerian labour laws. Bolt’s Senior Public Policy Manager for West Africa, North Africa and Central Africa, Weyinmi Aghadiuno, clarified this while fielding questions from this reporter.

According to her, there was really no quarrel with the union as the e-hailing company was never against the formation of unions by drivers. She, however, noted that the company only sought to clarify its relationship with the drivers as independent contractors in a gig economy, not workers or employees as they posited in the lead-up to their formal registration as a trade union.

“Nigeria has a robust Labour Act and it specifically defines who people are and what their status is when it comes to the environment of employment. But time has changed and we now have the gig economy and you have independent contractors also known as gig workers. So when the union came and they put in some terminologies that misrepresented their actual relationship in the gig economy with the partners, we came up to clarify that,” she said.

Recall that after their formal application to become a government-approved trade union last December, the Amalgamated Union of App-based Transporters of Nigeria (AUATON) accused the two largest ride-hailing companies, Uber and Bolt of trying to impose a yellow union on the entire industry through which they could control it.

Much later, the union would make a case for why they are workers and not independent contractors, insisting that drivers are the only aspects of the e-hailing business that work round the clock to actually make money. They then insisted that if the app companies do not consider them workers then they must consider them slaves. Finally, they accused the companies of “threatening the union with name change,” a ‘threat’ it would eventually have to succumb to.

See also: ‘If we are not workers are we slaves?’ e-hailing drivers union knock Uber and Bolt

Reacting to all that, Bolt Senior Public Policy Manager, Weyinmi Aghadiuno, said the company only approached the trade registry to correct certain terminologies which the union employed during its registration process that misrepresented the relationship between them and the ride-hailing company.

“So what happened that period was that they put in some terminologies that totally misconstrued the relationship that we had and that’s exactly what we went to the trade registry to correct. One was the inclusion of ‘workers’ in their name. We never came out publicly to address the name because we were focused on the deliveries.

Weyinmi Aghadiuno

“Come to us but we can’t see you as a worker. So let’s leave it like that because it changes the dynamics. You’re independent contractors, you multi-app, so basically that terminology doesn’t work for you,” she said.

 Apparently, the Registrar of Trade at the Nigerian Ministry of Labour agreed with the app company because when the trade union certificate was eventually issued in August, the union, which before then was the Amalgamated Union of App-based Transport Workers of Nigeria (AUATWON), had become the Amalgamated Union of App-based Transporters of Nigeria (AUATON) as the term ‘workers’ had been removed.

Bolt insists the union has no power for collective bargaining

One power granted to workers’ unions is collective bargaining. This is simply the power to negotiate and reach agreements for the benefit of every single worker under the union. However, Weyinmi Aghadiuno said going by Nigerian and international labour laws, the AUATON does not have the power of collective bargaining. She said collective bargaining is reserved for a relationship between employee and employer who have an existing employment contract and are entitled to salary and negotiation of salary terms.

Thus, if it is established that there is no employee and employer relationship between Bolt and the drivers and no salary payment between them, then they cannot be entitled to the power of collective bargaining.

“Collective bargaining is not something the union as it was or as it is can do. If at all there is collective bargaining for them, it can only be done between them and the federal government or the state ministries of transport. So their collective bargaining was focused to come to discuss with the operators but we don’t have that relationship,” she said.

She went on to clarify that Bolt never said drivers can’t have a union or that they would not interact with them. She said the company is open to interacting with drivers ‘in whatever form’, which explains why they established a Driver Engagement Centre in Lagos. She revealed that there are more than 15 different unions and while a few of them have come under one umbrella, the company doesn’t discriminate between an independent driver or a union. 

We don’t close the door to anybody. So far as you come and say I’m person A and I drive on Bolt, we don’t ask you if you’re a union, whether you are a collective or an independent, we deal with you. And that’s the message we keep passing across. Unions come with responsibilities. It comes with dues, it comes with politics, it comes with ideologies that some other people don’t want. So we cannot focus on the union and leave the independents. We are open to everyone. 

She also said going forward, Bolt is working on different schemes on how to interact with the union. One such scheme was the inaugural Driver-led Safety Summit which was held in Lagos. Representatives of the AUATON were present at the summit and they highlighted the need for rider verification and significant improvements to road conditions as major factors in fostering a safer environment for both drivers and riders in the ride-hailing sector.

Aghadiuno further pledged that the company will keep looking for different ways of interacting with the unions.