Know Your Right as an Employee: #001 (Illegal Deductions)

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Hello Friend, thank God it's Friday, the day i'll start posting about the right of Employees which some, if not many don't know about as earler stated in this post Know Your Right as an Employee

in today's post, we will be looking at if the employer has the right to deduct money from his employees' salary?

In some parts of the world, it is a common practice for an employer to by way of penalty, deduct a given amount of money from the salary of their enployee in the name of punishing them for an offence they commited. offences like, late resumption of duty amongst others.

BUT THE BIG QUESTION IS, ARE SUCH DEDUCTIONS LEGAL?

Well lets here from the law that governance work in some of this countries. for the purpose of reference, I shall be using Nigeria labour law, also given that such practice is very common here.

Section 5 of the Nigerian labour law specifically made it clear that no employer is allowed to make any deduction from the salary of a worker, or make any agreement with a worker for deduction from salary or make any regulation, direction, rule, culture or policy of deductions from salary except where such deduction is allowed by law and thus, existing rules, policies, documents or agreement allowing for deduction from salary of a worker or workers apart from the deductions allowed by the law, are illegal .
It is worthy to note also that even in an unlikely event where a worker destroy any property of his employer or cause any damage, harm or loss to his employer, the worker’s salary cannot be deducted unless there is a written consent from an Authorized Labour Officer from the Federal ministry of Labour and Employment. (Section 5(1) Labour Act CAP L1 LFN)

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WHAT THEN CONSTITUTES LEGAL DEDUCTIONS OR DEDUCTIONS ALLOWED BY LOW?
These are deductions for the purpose of contributions to provident or pension funds or other schemes agreed to by the worker and approved by the State Authority. In the case of Nigeria,

• Pension contribution
• national housing contribution
• National social Insurance trust fund
• Others consented to by the employee in writing.

With these I hope some of us in this blockchain have learned one or two things that will better equipped us in our various places of work.
Please share and reblog so that many who need to know about these right with see it.

Together we can stop the injustices in our various work places.