DPA teaches members how to create their employment contract even when the employer failed to give them one

In its usual effort to keep its members informed, DPA offers a guide on how to overcome one major problem workers face in Nigeria. The write up below will be exciting to every person that works for someone else.

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT

Many employers will not give you a written employment contract. They just ask you to start work and you keep receiving your salary. But you know that without written terms of employment, your job is not secure and your employer can fire you and deny you your last months salary and any benefits he promised you when you were hired. Unfortunately, it is Nigerian lawyers that tell the expatriates and foreigners not to bother giving employment contracts to Nigerian employees.

One of the marks of being in an underdeveloped country is that no law requires your employer to give you a written employment contract. In other countries that are developing faster, employers are required to have a written employment contract with each employee. The purpose of such written employment contract is to protect the rights of the employee against a sudden change of the terms promised her at the beginning of the employment.

When your employer refuses to give you a written employment contract, that means it is not clear when and why you can be fired or what will happen when you are fired. That means you are totally at the mercy of your employer. If he wants sex and you refuse, you can be fired without pay. If he suspects that his wife likes you, you will be fired. If he likes your daughter and you don’t encourage her to be nice to him, you will be fired. And if fired, there is nothing you can do because there is nowhere it was written down that you were even his employee. He can say that all the money he has been paying you was just to help you out on charity. He can claim that you were a volunteer worker in his company, etc. You can’t do anything because you have no written employment contract.

The above is a big concern to our members. While we cannot change the situation overnight, we can provide the following useful guide to protect your interest.

(1) The first thing to do is to make sure you keep a record of the job advertisement that you responded to and got the job. Nobody advertising for workers will say he will not pay you and treat you well. Rather, they will describe themselves as successful business that offer competitive employment opportunities. They will say they are looking for well-qualified workers. Keep a copy of this. It will help you if and when your employer tries to say you were just a volunteer that he wanted to help or that you were just an apprentice he offered to train.

(2) During the time you were being interviewed for the job, you would have received several emails and text messages talking about the job. Save all such communications.

(3) During the time you were working for the employer, he would have sent you to third parties or he would have described you in memos and letters to customers and suppliers. Keep copies of such memos for when your employer tries to deny you.

(4) From time to time, find an opportunity to send an email or text message to your immediate manager describing your work and any particular target you met. Keep such messages and his replies in case.

(5) If your employer has a staff manual when you were employed, make sure you keep a copy at home. The courts have held that those staff manuals are contractual in nature and that they contain part of the things the employer and employee agreed as part of the terms of employment.

(6) Keep in safe place every letter of commendation or promotion you received while on the job.

(7) Also keep copies of every query or disciplinary correspondence you received while on the job. When things go bad, the employer will magnify your sins. But having a copy of what it was, when committed will save you from subsequent harmful exaggerations thereof.

(8)  If you receive any unusual payments from your employer, find a nice harmless way to obtain a written explanation what the payment was about. The worst thing to happen to you is where your employer suddenly treats your salaries as commission.

Keep all these things in a safe place outside your place of work. Remember that the day you are fired, they may not allow you to return to your desk. Most likely, you will be escorted out to the gate right from your last meeting with the human resources manager. Anything you kept in your desk drawers then belongs to your employer.

If you have 1 to 8 listed above, they will help the court put together the terms of your employment, even if your employer did not give you an employment contract.