Aviation Union Threatens to Direct Workers to Stop Doing Business with Turkish GM over Sack of Seven Nigerians

Chinedu Eze

The National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) has condemned the sack of seven Nigerian staff of Turkish Airlines by the company’s General Manager in charge of Lagos, Lokman Balkan, over allegation of their involvement in $600, 000 ticket racketeering.

NUATE said it would direct all its members at all the airports in the country to stop transacting business with Balkan, alleging that the allegation of ticket racketeering was cooked up to justify the sack of the seven Nigerians.

The union pointed out reasons why it disagreed with Balkan over the allegation.

“In the first place, the claim that the Airline lost $600,000 is mere phantom. What happened is that sometime in April, 2023, Turkish Airlines’ headquarters issued a sales restriction circular which allowed sales of only two premium classes of tickets as a response to foreign airlines’ difficulty in repatriating their proceeds to home countries due to foreign exchange constraints in Nigeria.

“But, in a contradicting manner the airline had an advertised fare on the website which was much lower than the permitted fares. Therefore, intending passengers who accessed such fare, but could not pay online were directed by the global call center to approach the Nigerian offices.”

“As the workers could not attend to the customers due to the sales restriction, the passengers resorted to creating ugly scenes at the sales offices which became riotous at times.  As an image saving measure, the then sales manager asked the sales staff to use the PNR obtained online by the customers to process the tickets if the Airline’s booking system could route the tickets.

“The sales staff simply complied. As a matter of fact, the then sales manager, a Turkish national, sold these tickets too to confirm that this was the local management’s approved approach to resolving the problem created by the website,” NUATE explained.

In a statement signed by its Secretary General, NUATE said the airline’s accountants received all due monies from all tickets sold and all sales report were daily submitted to sales manager, signed by him and accounts department and scanned to HQ.

“If monies were not fully received, the account would not have balanced, and sales could not have been concluded.

“Therefore, no monies belonging to Turkish Airlines is missing. And no staff has taken any monies belonging to Turkish Airlines. Importantly, no staff had any pecuniary benefit from the so called internet sales.

 “It is, therefore, disingenuous for the General Manager to hold the workers to the charge of failure to comply with the sales restrictions when it is clear that shortcomings on the part of the Airlines ICT (on the website) combined with Local Management’s decisions on managing an otherwise ugly situation were responsible for the sales in question,” NUATE said.

The union observed that it was noteworthy that while the Nigerian staff had been dismissed, the Turkish Sales Manager was promoted and redeployed.

“The airline also claimed in the publication that it held several meetings with NUATE and that the union fully participated in the disciplinary committee that tried the workers. This is only half truth.

“In none of the meetings did the union agree with the management’s positions or its findings. Even at the so called disciplinary hearing, the union made it absolutely clear that the committee could only be used as a fact finding means as it was not formed in conformity with the negotiated conditions of service. This was because the so called Disciplinary Committee that sat over the matter was nothing but a kangaroo court.

“The General Manager who issued queries to the staff and decided that their responses were not accepted was the same person who set up the Committee, and was the same person who chaired the Committee.

“Under the circumstance, it was practically impossible to have fair hearing, nor justice as can be seen from the outcome. At any rate, Union conveyed its position to the Management in writing at the time,” the union said.

 NUATE alleged that it was on record that the General Manager since his assumption of office in May, 2023, has strangely adopted subterfuge and strong-arm tactics to create a stuffy and toxic atmosphere in the Turkish Airlines workplace, disclosing that the Manager had employed threat, intimidation and blackmail to induce fear among the workers in order to force the workers to worship him as a demi-god.