Marx Class Theory and Contract Employment in Nigeria: An Exploration of the Manifest Causes and Consequences

Abstract

The authors explore the manifest causes and consequences of contract employment in Nigeria using Karl Marx’s Class theory. They observe that both the government and employers are keen promoters of contract employment in Nigeria. This results from the high rate of unemployment, poor standard of employment regulations and obsession to make profit respectively. The consequences of these factors are poor social, economic and psychological benefits for contract workers. Though there are benefits attached to contract employment in Nigeria for workers such as an industrial training student, a married woman who does not want to work full-time or an unskilled or semiskilled person, employers have shortchanged workers by employing university/higher institution graduates and owners of professional certificates as contract employees for profit motive. With a volatile labour market, there have
been proliferations of many unscrupulous recruitment/employment agencies that take advantage of desperate unemployed persons, thereby promoting nonstandard employment relations such as contract jobs. Although, it is sometimes suggested that the benefits of contract jobs constitute the price of progress, identified with increased flexibility and presented as the precondition for economic progress, this reality is seemingly not the case in Nigeria as many contract employees face myriad of social, economic and psychological problems in both their place of work and the society as a whole.