Casual Worker

The practical test is substance, and it is the same test that applies to misclassification generally.

Is the engagement genuinely short and tied to a real short term need, or is it renewed indefinitely.

Does the worker do the same job as permanent staff.

Is the work continuous, or is there genuine intermittency.

Are they integrated into the team, supervised, rostered and directed like anybody else.

Where the answers point to permanent employment, the arrangement is exposed regardless of what the paperwork says.

For employers, the response is to structure honestly. Use genuine short engagements for genuine short needs, with written terms stating the period and the basis. Where a role has become continuous, convert it to permanent employment with a written contract and the entitlements that follow.

The cost of doing that is predictable. The cost of a claim covering several years of denied entitlements, brought when the relationship ends, is not.

Casualisation has been one of the most contested issues in Nigerian employment, particularly in oil and gas, manufacturing, construction, retail and banking.

The National Industrial Court, applying international labour standards alongside Nigerian law, has been consistent. Keeping workers on casual terms for extended periods, doing the same work as permanent staff without the same entitlements, has been treated as unfair labour practice, and the court has been willing to find that the substance of the relationship was permanent employment.

Organised labour has pressed the issue hard, and it overlaps with the outsourcing debate: a worker engaged through a manpower company, working under the end user's direction for years, raises the same question of who the real employer is.

The exposure sits with the end user or the principal employer rather than with whoever issued the paperwork, because that is who controlled the work.

For employers the practical position is that the arrangement buys short term cost saving and accumulates long term liability. Arrears of the difference between casual and permanent terms, statutory contributions that were never made, and terminal entitlements all crystallise when a claim is brought.

For workers, the practical point is to keep records: rosters, payslips, identity cards, communications showing continuous engagement and the work actually done. Those records are what establish continuity when the relationship ends.

Three engagement types on a spectrum, and Nigerian practice blurs them constantly.

A genuine casual worker is engaged for a short or intermittent need, paid for the days worked, with no expectation of continuity on either side.

Contract or fixed term staff are employed for a defined period under a written contract, with the entitlements that contract provides. The employment is real; it simply has an end date.

A permanent employee is employed indefinitely, with statutory and contractual entitlements including notice, leave, pension where applicable and protection from unfair dismissal.

The abuse is dressing the third as the first. A worker engaged as a casual, working continuously for four years alongside permanent colleagues, is in substance the third, and the National Industrial Court looks at substance.

Enforcement depends on a worker bringing a claim, and casual workers are the group least able to. They have least security, least resources and most to lose from complaining while still engaged.

Proving continuity is also difficult where the employer controls the records and the engagement was deliberately structured to look intermittent.

The informal sector is largely beyond reach, and much Nigerian casual work is entirely undocumented.

And genuine casual work is legitimate, so the line between a real short engagement and disguised permanent employment is a matter of fact that has to be established case by case.