Esso Chad Workers Go on Strike

Esso Chad Workers Go on Strike
Chad News 7/5/2006
More than 400 Chadians working for a U.S. oil company subsidiary have gone on a 3-day strike over a pay dispute, a workers' spokesman said Wednesday.

The workers of Esso Chad, a subsidiary of Houston-based ExxonMobil, stopped working Tuesday to press for a 25-percent rise in their basic pay, which they had proposed a day earlier during talks with the company's management, said Gotram Ngaralbaye, a spokesman for the workers.

Workers had originally asked for a 100-percent increase, while the company has insisted it can only make a 7.5-percent hike, a position the company stuck to in Monday's meeting that was also attended by Chadian government officials and representatives of Chad's umbrella trade union body, Ngaralbaye told The Associated Press.
"We have decided to go on a 3-day strike while remaining open to talks. But we want to show Esso that we are not going to budge on the 25-percent salary increase," said Ngaralbaye.

Esso officials were not available for comment.

The strike follows a memorandum workers sent to the management in March claiming, among other things, that Chadian staff faced discrimination, the company offered no career plan or development, and their pay did not reflect the work they did or Chad's socio-economic situation.

Esso Chad's management denied that there was discrimination in the company and said any differences in pay was based on clear criteria such as performance, experience, and qualifications.

ExxonMobil Corp. leads a consortium that includes Chevron Corp. and Malaysia's Petronas that pumps oil from several oil fields in southern Chad through a 1,060-kilometer (663-mile) pipeline that stretches to Cameroon's Atlantic port at Kribi, from where the oil is exported.

This week's strike only affected the operations of Esso Chad and not the other members of the consortium.